Leland Seese
“The ceremony of innocence…”
— W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”
Decency, with forethought, fled the onslaught, frightened
hare determined to outrun the conflagration. Another summer,
half the continent on fire,
the other half, half-man, half-wild boar unleashed
to rampage for red meat throughout the grange halls,
rodeo arenas, and convention centers in a state debased
by aspirations to depravity.
Arise, a plague of hatchlings in the cycle of their spawn,
rounding years and decades, our quiet certitude, penned
in articles and declaration, preamble and amendment,
leaving us somnambulistic with success
in all the matters of our living that, in the final
judgment, mean the less — hegemony and privilege,
lingua franca of oppressors in pressed suits, Beach
Boy dreams of endless summer, fossil fueled across
the living harvests captured from the shithole countries.
Arise, O scaly beasts and beat the armored wings
of your conceit, beat the shrying women, malignant
children from the south, whom you see slithering
their infestation into schools and playgrounds, tell
the mouthy men, Go back to Univision! Indeed, The best
lack all conviction, leveraging control of women
and their own portfolios for a mess of potage. Or waiting
like the audience to the sacrifice of Kitty Genovese,
surely someone else will make the call, or slap down
the result of sedulous investigation as if it were the
Queen of Hearts.
Meanwhile, lifting from the ground like the undead
arise the hatchlings of the cursed cycle, genitalia dangling
unashamed and thrusting, whose creed
is overturning, out-maneuvering, signing with the blood
of others their Horse-Thief Covenant, as that rough beast
from which we thought we were protected slouches
toward our shore.
Leland Seese’s poems appear in The MacGuffin, Juked, The Stonecoast Review, and other journals. He and his wife live in Seattle with a revolving cast of foster, adopted, and bio children.
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