San Diego Reader

• I think you’re wonderful.
• I’m driving my car
• and your name is on every mailbox.
• I’m kissing you
• and my shoes crawl away
• in darkness, sweet gadgets
• sing in my wrists, the life
• I dumped into the river years ago
• is reported found in the Philippines....
• Why do I tell you this?
• Because your lingerie
• is burning, because a lone drop
• of rain is falling somewhere
• above the Sahara, because
• I think you’re wonderful.

Thomas Lux, American poet, will be reading from his work at San Diego State University’s Scripps Cottage at 7 p.m. on April 9. Lux, who is currently the Bourne Professor of Poetry at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and three National Endowment Fellowships in Poetry as well as the prestigious Kingsley Tufts Award. From the Southland, a collection of the essays that Lux wrote for the San Diego Reader over the past several years, has just been published by Marick Press. His most recent collection of poetry is God Particles from Houghton Mifflin. “I Think You’re Wonderful” is from Memory’s Handgrenade, published by Pym-Randall, and is reprinted here by permission.