Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Alice (Poem by Clara B. Jones)


Alice

for Robin (Asheville, 2015-2016)

You are a radical poet in love with a
transgender rap star who speaks Russian and
sings patriotic songs about Putin's good
looks--decompensating like silt sliding down
McKinley or bones decaying in the Sahel.
If you don't do something now you'll never
be the same again unless your pets run away
or Paul Beatty wins another prize though you
ate lobster on the beach where your cousin
brought a kilo that she shared with Richard's
wife whose puppy ran in Lagrangian move-
ments around the fire. You're as troubled as my
nephew Alice whose husband studied ants in
Sudan before the revolution changed every-
thing, and his thesis was a referendum on
animal rights when another case of hack-
ing proved his theory about the American way.


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