Poem of the Day
The People’s History of 1998
By Gbenga Adesina
The Yangtze River in China lost its nerve / and wanted vengeance.
The Yangtze River in China lost its nerve / and wanted vengeance.
my neighbors
say, when what they mean
The great Evening has fallen and the world has grown tired
like a blinkered dray horse knock-kneed in its harness.
The trees are little green puffs and the flies slower and dimmer—
Eventually the
most accident-prone
Should the painful condition of irreversible paralysis
last longer than forever or at least until
Many fish in those murky ocean caves
of Mexico, Brazil, Croatia, Oman
have no eyes.
Though in the streams outside—
woe our good kaspar is dead
who will wear now the burning flag in a braid who will crank the coffee grinder
who will lure the idyllic deer
Estas brutal, someone says about the heat or the boricua
walking down the street with a dulce de leche. My sister shivers.
I paraphrase a fever when I mount the stairs to the roof to swelter
Up till three reading zombie
comic books, I wake to video-
game first-person shooters
Paul Guest, I am looking forward to your birthday
and the long chain of fitful celebrations
that will follow and be broken
What if I made you hear this as music
But not how you mean that. The slow beam