It's my birthday I've got an empty stomach and the desire to be lazy in the hammock and maybe go for a cool swim on a hot day with the trombone in Sinatra's "I've Got You Under My Skin" in my head and then to break for lunch a corned-beef sandwich and Pepsi with plenty of ice cubes unlike France where they put one measly ice cube in your expensive Coke and when you ask for more they argue with you they say this way you get more Coke for the money showing they completely misunderstand the nature of American soft drinks which are an excuse for ice cubes still I wouldn't mind being there for a couple of days Philip Larkin's attitude toward China comes to mind when asked if he'd like to go there he said yes if he could return the same day
—David Lehman
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from The Daily Mirror, 2000
Scribner, New York
Copyright 2000 by David Lehman.
All rights reserved.
Reprinted by permission of Scribner from The Daily Mirror. Copyright 2000 by David Lehman. For further permissions information, contact Scribner, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020
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David Lehman
David Lehman (1948- ) is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including <em<Yeshiva Boys (2009), When a Woman Loves a Man (2005), The Evening Sun (2002), and The Daily Mirror: A Journal in Poetry (1998).