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Look Who Came Dressed as the Sun

What’s worse, energy or ambition?

We used to say sincerity, now we can’t—

the wind not so easy to utter either

when it’s filling up your mouth.

Figure out something edible, a seed

at the source but nothing occurs.

If you write “ironic detachment”

in your orange notebook again

I’m going to throw it into a fire

even if I have to make a fire.

When one gets a handle on blame—

it’s beneficial for the critic to have

a few extra fingers—it allows one

to fabricate more useful than usual

perversions. A man stepped off the train

holding a pale green thing which might

have been a takeout salad or maybe

a lizard filling the cradle of meat

his fingers made. I tried to see

but he was gone—that’s how a lot

of stories end when someone smarter

than you doesn’t like you either.

It’s basically always me in here

but I’m less crucial than the light

that shoots through every window

I walk by and floods me almost with joy.

from They Don’t Kill You Because They’re Hungry, They Kill You Because They’re FullFind it in the library

Copyright © 2014 Mark Bibbins
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc.
on behalf of Copper Canyon Press.

Published in Mark Bibbins Poems

This program is supported in part by a grant from the Idaho Humanities Council, a State-based program of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this (publication, website, exhibit, etc.) do not necessarily represent those of the Idaho Humanities Council or the National Endowment for the Humanities.