In this year of peace, thwarted blockages, no gangs of children clot the open door as Stalin or Lenin anymore; 5 the costume's faded. At Fort Monmouth where our iron eagle stares blinkless eastward to the Atlantic churning and its grey sleet, 10 their spattered laurels rust and haemorrage in a truss of antique victories. Winter hovers nearer, and you madden. The orange, 15 too-large, too-humorless, fangs on the pumpkin-goblin sharpen and glitter in the dark. A blackbird shifts on the orisoned bough; Our ramrod 20 Police Chief thought you due for a salted season in Wing 6, behind the chicken-wire window that dices up the sky in blue diamonds; blue as the Xanax 25 tablets that they'd doled to fog and finish your everlasting fire. Forty in an hour refused to soak 30 your burning for the afterlife to dimness. On the neat brick wall useless as Homer's chorus, or Linus telling Charlie Brown a joke, 35 the old generals sit, deprived like you of the ecstatic quaver of their insanity and fold their hands. 40 You stare into the darkness that you brought. "Why, we had better eat this time up quick, quick," your numbing voice explains with painful exactitude. "Before 45 the unexpected bread begins to stick and sugar in our throats." The black rinds harden and go sour. 50 Perhaps now we have a futile hour to donate to the mad.
From the collection "Red Bank"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.