thirty day poetry challenge
day 05– ‘leftovers‘
am I supposed to relate to the third-child mother
standing on the porch with her vagina
on the flagpole and a joint fucked
into her mouth like a second-smile, the smoke
sagging through her — she is American
myth; at least during the Depression
she probably believed in God and sold her children
with some feeling, now she does it
easily, the government fucking her
like a schoolgirl, the soviet
identity attempts running down all of
us like blood — my fingers are peach-colored from trying
to pry her out, and she stubbornly foams up —
MOLD, coating the old fridge food; but is she really any
better than the trench-coat girl in Boston
with the Paris Review subscription and prescription
relaxation and sex life; I am not moralizing
I am trying to say: this seems inevitable, at least
in the art, that we eat what they
spit out yesterday and last year — politique is meant
to be everywhere, stay there, stay
engaged; but reading poetry on the toilet, while I
am shitting, am I supposed to relate — ? to this new
sad parade, to this new — editorial cut-out god
re-crusaded at all of us, aggressively and nihilistically,
but not hopefully; for fuck’s sake, I want one only
whomever not finding her peace
in yoga or utopia, it doesn’t need to be the eighteenth century
feast — just not, THIS.
the last pavilion 