Mark Young | POETRY MadHat Issue 15

I was in West Virginia
last weekend, inhaling
the gases from the godly
gifted Jah herb, & I saw

a home that had LARGE
persimmons—which I
thought, at first, were apples—
on a tree. At least I think

they were persimmons, & not
Donatella Versace’s plastic
surging boobs. As with most
of her caprices, the “apparently

opposite” meanings are in
reality not opposite at all, are
merely applied to different
spheres. Her soap curdles

when thrown into the fluid.
She does not care that
medicinal sarsaparilla root
is supposed to be anodized

or that particles of ice have
formed on the aluminum-
framed windows of the
Summer Palace in the ancient

city of Lhasa. Tuning a piano
also tunes the barrels of her
brain. Politics is the pursuit
of progress, not perfection.

I have bought myself a Sheridan tank, though it doesn't become me when I wear it. The caterpillar tracks drag my earlobes down; the fingers on my right hand have all been broken by brushing the gun barrel out of my eyes; &, with a sense of timing befitting highwire acrobats, every time I go to say something important or am about to deliver the punchline to a story, the turret hatch lifts up & the oil-smeared crew emerge, oblivious that they have destroyed the tension of a moment that was important to me.

locomotive power
/ backstory
          so that
fashions can emerge from
constructions
          knowledge
of, graffiti.
deposited amount
: separate
objects
in the         background.
She the source of
the use of
the; accumulation of
“I regret to say that          we
of the FBI are powerless
to act.

a crucial punctuation point in the
iconography of this war;

                          The model, with its
                                      seminar rooms full
                         of audio-visual
                              equipment, is an in-
                stinctive one, instantly
                                   recognized by those
                       driven parents who
                                          exploit theories of
                    tokenism to, in turn, drive
                              their children. This is not
                for survivors; nor is
                                  it possible to reflect upon
                           history seen as a class
                              struggle. Its own economic
                     vulnerability means those
                             frustrations are relational.
                                           Once again the Marinid
                           hegemony seems to
                                        be consolidating itself.

Mark Young's most recent books are the e-book Asemic Colon from The Red Ceilings Press, and The Codicils, a 600-page selection of poems written in the past four years, out from Otoliths.