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Thursday, September 26, 2013

Poem-A-Day: Worst Things First by Mark Bibbins

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Worst Things First

 

A bag of thank-you notes fell

on me and that was enough

art for one day. Culturally speaking,

it was more like a year

in the floral trenches, kicked off

with a single boneless kiss.

Poor sad demon in his poor dead tree--

or is it he who pities me, cockshy

quasihero with a latex lasso,

taking forever to measure

 

the dimensions of his confinement.

Certain other demons have smeared a flock

of sparrows on a blanket, the full filthy

price of a sky under which they smoked

their names. My prize is a set

of teeth, striptease at the nude beach,

audio files of decomposing stars

telling me, if they're telling me

anything, that theory's just another word

for nothing left to like.

 

 

 

 

Copyright © 2013 by Mark Bibbins. Used with permission of the author.  

About This Poem

"Last year Melissa Broder asked a pack of poets to write in response to tarot cards; I drew the High Priestess. You may detect in the last lines an echo of a song covered by Janis Joplin, something of a high priestess herself. In her version, Bobby, previously a woman, was made into a boy."  

 

 

--Mark Bibbins

 

 

 

 

Most Recent Book by Bibbins

(Copper Canyon Press, 2014)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
September 26, 2013

 

Mark Bibbins is the author of three books of poetry, including the forthcoming

They Don't Kill You Because They're Hungry, They Kill You Because They're Full (Copper Canyon Press, 2014)He teaches in the graduate writing programs at The New School and Columbia University. 

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Poem-A-Day
Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-A-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Browse the 
 
 



 
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