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    This Is the Hour of Lead

    cento

     

    by Simone Muench

     

     

    Dress me in burlap & bone. Kiss me,

    kill me. Kill me later. Kill me again

    as arbitrary blackness gallops in.

     

    I shut my eyes & all the world drops dead.

    Forgive me, the wound is hard to place—

    part voltage, part rain

     

    twisting galactic, slow, beneath

    black nebulae. & shreds

    my heart’s meat & gristle.

     

    On board the train of ghosts

    guns hum with promises of taxidermy.

    Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mistake

     

    a black bullet for a Sunday blessing.

    Hung before me like hosts

    are crossing guards in white gloves,

     

    doing & undoing the blood river,

    their buttons of simulated bone. Condolences

    on the backs of postcards put an end

     

    to the vexing as the conquered gods,

    like oily links of the anchor’s chain, say

    hush-hush-hush. Nothing will save you.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    [Emily Dickinson, Suki Kwock Kim, D.A. Powell, Sylvia Plath, Evie Schockley, Bruce Beasley, Philip Jenks & Simone Muench, Lisa Sewell, John Gallaher & G.C. Waldrep, Stacy Gnall, Denise Duhamel, Marisa de los Santos, Robert Pinsky, Tracy Brimhall & Brynn Saito, Lynn Emanuel, Kenneth Koch, Terrence Hayes, Brandi Homan, Jackie White, Tyehimba Jess]

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