its taped embrace, its diction of victimhood.
Six visits to Beard-and-Pipe and a pox
on both your Houses.  Says you’ve succumbed
to the crutch of proximity, the comfort
of echolocation.  Says, where were you
when passion came up for parole?  Preparing
a broth of thyme & parsnip, getting ice done up
in a twisted dishtowel.  Six bells sound
on the burning brow and then the doldrums
with flotillas of the familiar, their polar drift,
their glacial cold and slow.  You’ve ministered
the quick now out of session.  Dallied
with the line-dance, the ballot box, the laws
& sausages, to wit:  undone geography.  And waited
for the other m to make its move, and watched
the bird that’s hovering above the place
a withered limb once reached.

Notes : The title is taken from a line in Mary Jo Bang’s Louise Sighs, Such a Long Winter, This.

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