Art and poetry on page and stage
13
Michael Rothenberg
TERRORISTIC
Downstream from the incinerated calamity Wheat rises from a bone-yard exodus Sunset at Taiji Cove Satin monoxide corridors “I can’t breathe!” Migration of the armored cemetery The ancient howling latitudes Honeyed shackled sunsets The pink eclipse at 4am Corrosive linguistic fakery Leaves spun on a static loom Ducklings in a petroleum eddy Bellows wheeze in purple swollen light Toxic figurines waltz over swollen graves Swans of fire sail on a dying synapse Under the boughs of a blood division Hungry blades scorch the velvet harness Shit springs up from the ground Lithium worms wriggle through the clouds The skin of the gleaner’s hands and feet Crack in the faint sun Wisteria petals spill lavender on the pebble path Hummingbirds roar through the radioactive forest Beheadings and amputations float In the coral shallows Insects click in the coiled iron prism of a nightmare Sticks gather in a furious bundle Beneath the broken willow To tremble in the slaughter To swim in atom light To turn forever on a sleepless swell.
Michael Rothenberg is the editor of BigBridge.org and co-founder of 100 Thousand Poets for Change. His most recent books include Sapodilla (Swan World, Paris, France) and Drawing The Shade (Dos Madres Press). A bi-lingual edition of Indefinite Detention: A Dog Story and the collection Tally Ho and the Cowboy Dream/The Real and False Journals: Book 5 will be published by Varasek Ediciones (Madrid, Spain, 2017).