Ode to the Belt

Ode to the Belt

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it’s clear the future does not bode well for the living

my man wont let me forget where leather comes from

the engineered animal bent over in chemical grass

the slit thing hanged & blood slunkskin stripped

& tanned in order to keep a man decenti know

how to keep a manthe belt knows how to keep order

the sound of his unbuckling’s pavloviana sidewalk

split into drooling meat. he beats me into my evening

blush, i clutch pearls, eyes the color of a little red cloak.

bless this bridle wrapped around my throat while he

bloods me, bless the constricted windpipe’s unlikely music

bless any thing that can be remade to eke out pleasure

from stone, bless all this life thrashing against death’s

garish precipice, o bless me lord, bless me doorman,

bless me cormorant & courtship & torture & husbandry,

give me enough compression to remember i once lived

here & i’ll accept in the end not even death will wife me

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Between the reemergence of right-wing red-baiting and Donald Trump’s use of the chilling National Security Presidential Memorandum–7 to criminalize left political organizing, we’re seeing McCarthyism reborn before our eyes.

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Onward,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editor and Publisher, The Nation

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