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"Modern Times" by Wendy Taylor Carlisle



i.

the name is a little thing

someone else thinks of as a big thing

but there you go

collapsing their abomination

to make it fit

into your hand


ii.

anger simmers in the city sewers and in the county’s shallow wells

handshake religion is gone along with provable facts

most pumpkin filling isn’t all pumpkin

but try Libby’s it’s slick as grandma’s otter

there is often nothing for dinner despite our hunger

and the polity longs for fame not serenity


we hold the memory of who we were to our friends

before the great sickness


iii

today’s godhead resembles a goat’s head

elegant polar he knows it’s alright

to overdress for a riot

sunrise is a cavity in his yellow tooth

his robes are layered like a tree-split moonrise

the words of his prophecy are knives and hatchets

masquerading as divination

he carefully oils and sets them aside

hung on pegs over his sideboard

which resembles the Altiplano

he fancies they will come in handy when

he has to explain how he robbed us of divinity

gave us cell manacles and a prisoner suit

of humanness and why he hurls

ice and lightning at us from the same sky




Wendy Taylor Carlisle is the author of four books and five chapbooks. Se her work at www.wendytaylorcarlisle.com,

Follow her @wtcarlisle.

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