FANZINE

Look at our feeble stream.
Look at the horn we keep for the great beast.
Look at the poles injected under our flesh,
the packs of poison that nuzzle the breast.

I thought of fur for my traders
and all they wanted to do was fill their bellies
with acorns from Pooka’s tree
and lose their power in a creek.

I think I have another extension cord
and also a gun that can hit anything.

What am I doing, though, shitting
coils of rope?

Returning home from Afghanistan in a box
is usually not a good thing.

Though I guess it is
when it’s a gag for your kid

and you’re totally still
alive in there

in a big electronics box
decorated with wrapping paper.

On the other hand you could stab yourself
there in the box
and when your kid opens the box
sit as still and lifeless-looking as possible

and then maybe you’d realize
that’s not your kid

but an unknown shadow
nibbling away
scratching at the soil
opening the echo chamber

gloating about the horn.

You throw boulders at me.
I throw boulders at you.

It looks like we’ve thrown everything
but the kitchen sink.
____________________________________________

_{Marie Buck is the author of Life & Style (Patrick Lovelace Editions, 2009) and the chapbooks Amazing Weapons (Scary Topiary,  2012) and Doom Balloon (Abraham Lincoln, forthcoming). Her work has been anthologized in Against Expression: An Anthology of Conceptual Writing and translated into Italian for the magazine Abbiamo le Prove. She lives in Detroit, where she is completing a dissertation about the literature of the Black Power and Women’s Liberation movements.}