In a poetry workshop

 

The poet to my right coils and uncoils.

Flattens her chest against the table.

Crosses and uncrosses her legs.

She just can’t contain 

herself in a single form when she

speaks of her mean lovers.

Not her on my left with a penchant

for all the other hard things in life, 

which she reads to us with 

spine straight as a rod.

Her whole body pleading,

Please don’t hurt me.

Another sits deadpan. 

Life has scraped her clean. 

Taken her apart bone by bone.

Washed and dressed her

and set her down across from me.

Her poems fidget. Search 

for a place for the pain to start.

She asks, Can someone help me?

We writers model courtesy, self-control. 

There’s not one carnival vibe among us. 

We don’t even blink when our teacher

tells us he will soon be dying.

On command we pick up our pens--

our rescue—

And write down his prompt—Mercy. 

And then beg for it 

shamelessly.

Corporate mergers

Microsoft buys Activision; Kroger buys Albertsons; AT&T buys CNN, HBO, Cartoon Network, TBS, TNT; Warner Bros, Disney buys Marvel, Lucasfilm, 20th Century Fox; Google buys smaller things, Comcast buys everything else

Another merger, just as the prophet 

Marx predicted.

   

Capital never sleeps. 

In continuous motion, sucking all 

its forked and flicking tongue 

can bag in this craving 

 for omnipotence 

over nations, over new planets.

 Soon over Black Holes.

And we the ruined shops and souls 

are just their fuel.

And we the stars that twitch

then vanish over their event horizons, 

are torn into indivisible bits

where once we were whole beings 

who created all manner of angels and spheres

to save us from all manner of hells 

but who are so frail

before a force

that swallows light itself.