"Affront to Center and Circumference," "Bureau," and "Galvanizing Jumble"
Affront to Center and Circumference
Muster courage for precautions.
Scooch under these arrows, under that
artery. Maintain
a prudent distance
from lifeboat thrashers
& sheepskin boomerangs. Your safety remains pertinent
to us: litigation
bashes a budget already teetering.
When some nudnik messes with the top
layer of the palimpsest, contagion
will burgeon. Listen: half this
Congress is unhinged. Lawfuckers with backwater
growls, tethered to praxis
bold as lava, steer a revolution
to seed virtual
autocracy.
Bureau
Whispering scissors.
One skeletal
raconteur breeds
a wooden mood. Metallic puddles
spy his
vanishing. Bureaucracy vows
to sparkle.
To expound the mundane ecstatic. For all
present, if not all
accounted for. (Bookmark any stray charisma.) Gregarious
wisteria rises
from asphalt
road faults.
Galvanizing Jumble
Inside wallpaper, inhuman educators
steer
miscellany cruise.
Will you disembark at Misanthrope Alley, where silk
critics
lob long-rage missiles
at sleepwalkers’
daydream dregs
or at Luxury Tasteland, where an isometric jukebox’s
sandblasting
contemporary lyre solicits
cosmopolitan workout drool & galvanizes
amoeba vantage-perches
& galactic playrooms?
Thomas Fink has published 12 books of poetry-- most recently Zeugma (Marsh Hawk Press, 2022) and A Pageant for Every Addiction (Marsh Hawk, 2020), written collaboratively with Maya D. Mason. His Selected Poems & Poetic Series appeared in 2016. He is the author of Reading Poetry with College and University Students: Overcoming Barriers and Deepening Engagement (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), as well as two books of criticism, and three edited anthologies. His work appeared in Best American Poetry 2007. Fink’s paintings hang in various collections. He is Professor of English at CUNY-LaGuardia. Thomas recommends supporting the Native American Rights Fund. Portrait by Maya D. Mason.
