Lee Atwater, RNC

      "Wheeled cradled, blank-faced and blue-brained
      to the hospital chapel, I watch the ivory pastor's hands
      trace shadow rabbits in the air under the florescent cross
      and list my sins in silence as he drones redemption;
5     maybe St. Peter will greet me in heaven with a new guitar.
      Something babbles into static as my stroked-out arm relaxes...
      A tumor dripping ink now fills my mind, a black bud
      swelling to blood-blossom, ready to costume me in blood---
      Stalking back from the guillotine like a 50s zombie
10    blitzed on my first part in the Bs, I wake
      socketed in the NMR chamber like a bullet
      waiting for the green light to flit my diagnosis
      on the big screen, the chart a map of Europe.
      I lay enlarged; drugged and irradiated like a fallen fruit.
15    I still laugh when I hear a democrat's ill.
      I was worse: my perennial, emboldened
      humor ramping like a bull, I crooned Dukakis is bald
      from my black Marshall stacks for the innocent fetuses
      at the Republican convention, dating Miss America still....
20    I'm sorry I kicked his Greek hynee. Sorry for all that."

 

From the collection "Unimagined Things"

Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]

More information available on gregglory.com.