No Poem Is the Only Poem. No Story Is the Only Story. No Kings.
To be born in a paradise of green
Rich crops in fields protected by scarecrows
Amidst trees, flowers and endless hedgerows
Below hilltops that overlook the scene
Stretching far across an idyllic dream.
Is to know, that urban longing follows
To escape from rural woodland hollows
Towards the big city’s magnetic gleam.
Jimmy Carter looked green
as he delivered his last state
of the union. Of course, everyone
did on the old Magnavox for ten
I live in minefields, study dioramas
of disaster, pose in crime scenes. I pay
attention. Last night, I overheard a woman
Each word is a fly foregrounding the gap of its silence.
I scan for microscales something
Every Sentient Being
after Frannie Lindsay
The carcasses have been piling up
All fall—atrophied chipmunk splayed under our kitchen island,
SHAMAN IN THE LIBRARY
Naked except for a loin cloth,
ritual scars, and streaks of red clay
he attends the staff meeting.
Bowl haircut, back straight, face impassive.