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Unconditional Endorsement of the Future

So long I was told
be patient, the world
 
will come, and like a frog
inching up a pant leg
 
I leaned into the great eye
of a telescope. Summer.
 
Five wars in six
days. Three bodies
 
in three states.
Now we make terrible
 
lovers because we can’t stop
counting the snakes
 
in the yard, one with orange
stripes like a tiger, one
 
wrapped in the claws of an eagle
on the belt buckle of a man
 
with his skull in his hands.
It’s like this when you don’t live
 
forever: the dead in boats and
the dead in heaven, the dead stuffed
 
into shotgun shells and shot
wildly into air, the dead fall
 
around us, we blink them
from our eyes. At most
 
singing
is what we do.
 
And then the trumpets.
And then the screaming.
Picture
Fédèle Azari. Bombs over low buildings, 1914 - 1919. Gelatin silver print. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

Jeff Whitney is the author of The Tree With Lights, available from Thrush Press, while Radio Silence (Black Lawrence Press) and Smoke Tones (Phantom Books) were co-written with Philip Schaefer. Other poems can be found in Adroit, Beloit Poetry Journal, Blackbird, Colorado Review, Narrative, Poetry Northwest, and Verse Daily. He lives in Portland, where he teaches English.
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  • Home
  • About
    • Masthead
  • Archive
    • Issue One
    • Issue Two
    • Issue Three
    • Issue Four
    • Issue Five
    • Issue Six
    • Issue Seven
    • Issue Eight
    • Issue Nine
    • Issue Ten
    • Issue Eleven
    • Issue Twelve
    • Issue Thirteen
    • Issue Fourteen
    • Issue Fifteen
  • Guidelines