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Baffler Archives: Poems

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Grim Sleeper
O what is that sound—a shot in the night?        Down in South L.A., a shot, then a round? Only the cops, practicing for a fight, The cops, clowning around.   O what is that shadow I see—just the toes—        next to the dumpster, that look so cold? Only the ...

Underground
April 10, 2014
Listen: the squealing melody like someone’s baby as the train        lumbers into the station. I am listening to a song but I can barely hear myself        listening. What are you writing about? Nothing and everything at once. The last best test of ...

Di$claimer
Though unmoored and fearful in spirit,     you, trembling investor,         rather than ourselves or our affiliates,             will incur the bulk of the ...

Accounting for the Damage
Sixty seconds the earth shook beneath their feet   God-fumbled porcelain, the colonial palace rushing to pieces in the city center. Atlas rolls a shoulder in fitful sleep, and hearts crumble. Dazed palm   trees studding the horizon, bayonet the sky while soldiers ...

Inside the House
I’m no frail eel, no damsel steal, My costume’s a bathrobe, secure as hazmat one look at me, I’m addictive as transfat you can’t touch my towel-rack.   My batcave’s this needlepark, But it’s being converted to luxury condos, so I’m ...

The Robots Are Coming
with clear-cased woofers for heads, no eyes. They see us as a bat sees a mosquito—a fleshy echo, a morsel of sound. You’ve heard their intergalactic tour busses purring at our stratosphere’s curb, awaiting the counter intelligence transmissions from our ...

Or Why the Assembly Disbanded as Before
Hosanna in the borderline cinderblock warehouse, as much applause as possible to collapse inside an ambulance now that conveys   The intravenous bags and bottle holder, twenty-seven stones from here to the Idyllwild     to the gun fields   It’s a place ...

from California Tanka Diary
Meandering through hill-top neighborhood of splendid old mansions, I loiter at wrought-iron gates picketing the senator’s home.    * “Where does California’s produce go?” shoppers ask in supermarkets stocked with Mexican avocados and Chinese ...

Summit Meeting
The Germans fly in the day before and get the hotel rooms promised to the Palestinians. The Bolivians are nervous but expectant, having promised not to make a scene this time.   They say that money isn’t passionate but you can see the way it pulses in the groin of the ...

Equations
The calculation is simple enough; he comes for you when you least expect, when you are minding your own business in the middle of a pecan grove, shells at your feet, the sweet rot of overripe fruit, birds feasting all about, and suddenly, like light, he rests on you and you ...

Song of Whiteout and Backache
1 Well I’m so white, when the lights go out, I glow in the dark.   So white, when I wear white clothes all you see are the stripes on my socks.   White as the sun’s bare rays—iron-heavy and hot.   White as the grass that’s ...