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
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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Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editor and Publisher, The Nation
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
Sam SaxTwitterSam Sax is the author of Madness (Penguin, 2017), winner of the National Poetry Series, selected by Terrance Hayes. His second book, Bury It, will be out on Wesleyan University Press in 2018.