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Crow Hollow 19

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L. B. Williams

About the poem: For a first draft, I like to write as quickly as I can without censoring myself.  Then comes the pruning.  Sometimes I’m at my desk writing, but other times I find myself at a place like Starbucks, trying to catch the sounds and sights of New York City.

Crow Hollow Books

Murder Four, Spring 2017

The artist's space.

And He Has Won

 
How can this be in this yellow soaked hour?
On 23 rd street sweatshirts, hoodies
and music swaying on a radio and

Suzanne leads me down to the river,
Cohen gone now too on a brisk fall day.

Outside a non flammable gas truck
with a sign. Or is it an ambulance?

We must secure the peace of the land,

I hear it in the song blasting in Starbucks,
an aria of sound on window sills.

We try to make meaning of our lives
in lavender mists of silver soaked tea bags,
Tad’s steak house downstairs.

Where are we going America?
Where are we going?

Bullies make bully pulpits and bully lies
Swastikas of desecration, humiliation,

the devil a gentleman in a dark suit,
behind closed doors, his legs hairless.

I have seen students numbed
to tearless words on empty pages.

Maxims of anxiety.

A bus stops down 23 rd street
A woman with a yellow jacket limps by me.

Yes, Auden was right. We must
love one another or die.