The Mighty Kings of At Last:
                            Gene Tanta
 

 

Yes, puppy dogs are cute and yours is no exception, madam.
Don't pretty please me inside your bolted boxcars, 

you may not like it, you may not like it but a quite screw
behind closed doors will clear up that complexion.

Tongues are in the open mouths of fire
dark and sharp as sword blades from Mycenae, dark, madam,

and sharp the crossed-out stars that just won't quit.
I go to where the night always tastes of human flesh; searing

there, I stir and question mark the ashes
charred
into a pyre burning in reverse. As if! As if!

Specks fall on our shoulders, light enters our flesh
you look away as the thick wet and semifinal snow falls on.

See, I like you just fine; it's the wife with the scimitar
raised above her head in the hard to see,

 

Gene Tanta was born in Timisoara, Romania in 1974 and immigrated to Chicago in 1984 with family. He has earned his MFA from the Iowa's Writers' Workshop in 2000. He also translates contemporary Romanian poetry and is a practicing visual artist. Publications include: Epoch, Ploughshares, Circumference Magazine, Exquisite Corpse, Watchword, Columbia Poetry Review, and two collaborative poems with Reginald Shepherd in Indiana Review. Currently, he is a Ph.D. student in Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee.

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