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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Wallace Stevens

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Exposition of the Contents of a Cab

Wallace Stevens

From “Pecksniffiana”

VICTORIA CLEMENTINA, negress,

Took seven white dogs

To ride in a cab.

Bells of the dogs chinked.

Harness of the horses shuffled

Like brazen shells.

Oh-hé-hé! Fragrant puppets

By the green lake-pallors,

She too is flesh,

And a breech-cloth might wear,

Netted of topaz and ruby

And savage blooms;

Thridding the squawkiest jungle

In a golden sedan,

White dogs at bay.

What breech-cloth might you wear—

Except linen, embroidered

By elderly women?