Indulgences
Vendors on Xanadu subway
hawk their effigy food,
plasticware and paper napkins
next to a ticket booth.
A balladeer by a staircase
sings out the wrongs of our planet.
She holds an object carved of polished wood,
open at both ends, hollow as a drum:
a woman’s torso.
Punctuating lament, she
hits her eerie cylinder with a stick.
We all walk home, hungry.
What Once Was Darkness
Winter dawns,
radioactive blood,
rare choice in the palette
of Erebus
imbued with television glow.
Mark
Blaeuer, a gentleman of 58 who lives in the wilds of Arkansas, has had
poems in dozens of magazines over the years, including: Asphodel Madness, The Camel Saloon, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, and The Found Poetry Review.
