ROBIN WYATT DUNN - POEM

Robin Wyatt Dunn lives in a state of desperation engineered by late capitalism, within which his mind is a mere subset of a much larger hallucination wherein men are machines, machines are men, and the world and everything in it are mere dreams whose eddies and currents poets can channel briefly but cannot control. ​

the drink should when it

​
the drink should when it
or bend the thick
the strumming hit
my own
the bend it dips
below the lip
the bone
the aged bone who draws the line
around the magic kind of mine
the areolas and the serpents
tragedies and curtains
falling from the sky
the palpable curse
battering the house the house the house

each one wintering
in kind

the red and rouge and reddening keep
beneath the sky

the basket of the lancets
are they flowers?
lancets?

what kind of magic would you demand
for the story, child:

which kind of thing is it your body
nails and heart
teeth and scarf

what kind of lips
and tongue
strung over the harpsichord and drums

what kind of chord is it
when we are standing
before the rock

what kind of thing is it that you want
to see and shape

magicians are only potters
wheeling in the birds
pirouetting over the steppe

pageantry!
these fastenings for the tents:
clouds and rain

how many dances does it take
to rain
how many does it to take to run
the ravages into my heart