Tony Mancus and CL Bledsoe
Collaborative Poem #2
Rust appeals to empires because it’s another name for guilt,
This is how we’ll be saved, not with a bomb but with a whisper.
The words contrailed into failure, what we put up against a sky.
We knead our backs against the roots, watch the shower scene
play itself out and court the dust making its way back to us.
The executioner hates his job, but who can predict when he’ll take
a sick day. It eats at the throat when there’s nothing else.
I’ve been saving this scone recipe for a political climate
like y/ours. It only takes a day and a half of sick leave, threats
from the new faction of neighbors who you didn’t know
hated everyone that wasn’t the thin white duke, the scorn
of our future progeny, and three cupfuls of unbleached flour.
We can take direction, right? It’s just a bit further to never.
Attention is the vig we were promised. I’m just waiting for a dance
number to give me a cleaner agenda. I was lying. I still am.
Tony Mancus is the author of a handful of chapbooks. He lives with his wife Shannon and three yappy cats in Colorado and serves as chapbook editor for Barrelhouse.
CL Bledsoe is the author of seventeen books, most recently the poetry collection King of Loneliness (lulu.com, 2017) and the novel The Funny Thing About… (Spuyten Duyvil Publishing, 2018).He lives in northern Virginia with his daughter and blogs at How to Even… on Medium (with Michael Gushue).