Mark Fleckenstein
Two Sonnets Inspired by “Rising, Falling, Hovering” by C.D. Wright
An Experimental Sonnet for Trump’s America
This is no time for poetry, words dressed for dancing, awaiting the orchestra.
This is no time for light resembling a heart attack.
This is no time for to panic, to tempt wrists to play bloody.
This is no time for right or wrong, induced arguments, plastic bags.
This is no time for imagining, stalling, starting, wondering how air is made.
This is no time for trees, giving both birth and abortion.
This is no time for misspelled remarks, U turns, memorizing disappearing light.
This is no time for assumptions, understandings, strangling soft beliefs.
This is no time for all the hands needed to build a city, a bridge, a week.
This is no time for numbers, looking for an unknown address, absent any light.
This is no time for painting pain neutral colors, memory, forgetting, starting over.
This is no time for surprises, shock and awe, the expectations for stars.
This is no time for joking, it’s expensive, and only understood told backwards.
This is no time for poetry, words dressed for dancing, awaiting the orchestra.
A Near Sonnet With a Line by C.D. Wright
To be ashamed is to be an American.
To be ashamed is to explicate, then fuddle.
To be ashamed is to reverse engineer logic.
To be ashamed is to imagine you’re right in several dimensions.
To be ashamed is to see a razor as a sign of forgiveness.
To be ashamed is a lost bag of hope and misspelled name.
To be ashamed is to believe a mirror’s promises you killed.
To be ashamed is to lose your heart, freed soul, and still live.
To be ashamed is to wear the same skin, bruised and hateful.
To be ashamed is to be a line in the sand, crossed repeatedly.
To be ashamed is to believe truth is the same as power.
To be ashamed is to be a hero for many, many wrong reasons.
To be ashamed is to believe right and wrong are partners.
To be ashamed is to be an American.
Mark Fleckenstein is the author of A Name For Everything (Cervena Barva Press, 2019), Memoir As Conversation (Unsolicited Press, 2019), God Box (Clare Songbirds Publishing House, 2019), Making Up The World (Editions Dedicaces, 2018), I Am I, Drowning Knee Deep (Sticks Press, 2007), and The Memory Of Stars (Sticks Press, 1995), as well as in a number of anthologies. His work has appeared in the journals White Whale Review, Istanbul Literary Review, Sticks, Maryland Poetry Review, Boston Literary Review/BluR, The Little Magazine, Phone-A-Poem, Slant, Cimarron Review, The Worcester Review, Protea Poetry Journal, Cube, On The Edge, The Contemporary Review, Albany Review, and Southern Poetry Review. Fleckenstein holds a BA in English from the University of North Carolina in Charlotte, and an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. After finishing my MFA, settled in Massachusetts. The father of two daughters, he lives in Maynard, Mass.
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