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Verse Macabre

(Or: The Song of Impunity)

They tick them off, names from a secret 

List, and they fall nameless—half 

A pair of flip-flops on the asphalt,

 

At the edge of the oval of spotlight,

Or once, a blond Barbie smeared

With black grease and dried blood.

 

They are all the same: You never see 

Their faces, which are either wrapped

In masking tape or always averted, 

 

Or the pictures from the Night Shift 

Show only the pale, dirty soles of feet

The denim trousers torn or rolled up 

 

To the knees. They tick them off, 

In the fandango of dark alleys,

They’re coming down fast,

 

From the first hundred to the latest 

Thousand, as if completing a target,

Or chasing a deadline. They tick them off: 

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From the stories, one can never draw 

A pattern, not a rhyme nor reason, 

They impose a new diction: If you don’t

 

Talk to us, you’ll hang. If you do

You’ll hang anyway. We never get

The hang of it. Not the short 

 

Initials which are always final:

Never judicious nor judicial,

Always fatal: The corpse curls fetal.

 

They tick them off: Not in a sequence,

One or the other goes a la suerte,

Not a rhythm of the saints, San Duterte—

 

Who beats the drums, utters the verbs,

The distinct reverb: La Muerte—

All-teeth jaws clacking, coercing the vowels,

 

 

Clucking to utter the loss of all sense: 

Insanity.  The obscenities bouncing 

Between walls of the skull: Impunity.

 

 

20 May 2017

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