12 Short Poems Michael Gottlieb A ROUT-IN-WAITING this is what the doomed offer us a real sketch, featuring everyone who you did down all through the years an affecting irresolution, an overarching dispensation, not irresponsible ­ more like operating under a blanket alibi offering up inventions, cracking wise in the foyer, co-signing anything, a rout-in-waiting, the adage we return to, polished by disuse clotted with interpositions, minuted hiccups of studied shock taken at face value, a nodding acquaintance, the remaining objections At first blush, foiling the pursuers. A bank of something like rebuke. At the far end of the cloud         next