This week, ACM is posting poetry every weekday.
from G A G
i.
throughout the Midwest lie
under stars
soft warm grass there
brilliance in the throat
of the Universe “America
has on its hands an existential crisis.”
Your belief is a wind tunnel that turns
everybody
cold stars
don’t have backs that can break
ii.
better versa the vice victor the evil
pundits pretend
“A goal points you to the future you intend to reach.”
which you can most easily reach if you’re
White
Male
White
Male
White
pronounce memoir the French way
watch the fake news spread
tax dollars fund the dead
iii.
even baby’s breath is weary and stale
in their nostrils falls the hail
the country’s black men sent to jail
tyrants take the letters though they aren’t meant for them
elderberry acquired in the tipping point of the palm
iv.
glass jars are the healthier way to hold and store living things
generate F E A R
virus of our own making broke the family a / part of our own making
cannot write one more goddamn email
the tirade is going is going is going the tirade
is live tweeted
territory fracked and bleeding
v.
every day an unscathed body a miracle
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Nicole Wilson is the author of the collection Supper & Repair Kit (The Lettered Streets Press). Her poems have appeared in Action, Spectacle; Vast Chasm, jubilat, Versal, Destroyer, and elsewhere. She has an MFA in poetry from Columbia College Chicago and owns an independent fitness business based in Geauga County, Ohio.
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Patty Paine is the author of Grief & Other Animals, The Sounding Machine, and three chapbooks. Her writing and visual work have appeared in Blackbird, The Denver Quarterly, Gulf Stream, Waxwing, Analog Forever, Lomography, The South Dakota Review, and other publications. She is the founding editor of Diode Poetry Journal and Diode Editions and is director of liberal arts & sciences at VCUarts Qatar.
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