Walter Holland
Dismemberment
is the brutal breaking apart of
tenacious fact, and the dese-
cration of embodied beliefs
found in phrases such as “rule
of law,” “transparency,” “due
process” each necessary to
internally sustain the body politic.
First, removal of the heart may drain
reason, though it cannot evis-
cerate all truth, or dissolve away
the flesh of thinking, or gouge out the clarity of
vision. Shorn words, though severed
from the tongue, and speech, though gutted
from the mouth, can never fully destroy
the evidence found on the printed page.
Walter Holland, PhD, is the author of three books of poetry: A Journal of the Plague Years: Poems 1979-1992 (Magic City Press, 1992), Transatlantic (Painted Leaf Press, 2001), and Circuit(Chelsea Station Editions, 2010) as well as a novel, The March (Masquerade Books, 1996 and Chelsea Station Editions 2011). His work has appeared in The Antioch Review, HazMat, Redivider, Rhino, and other journals and anthologies. He writes book reviews for LambdaLiterary.org and Pleiades. Follow him at: walterhollandwriter.com.
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