What Rough Beast | Poem for July 29, 2017

Tom Daley
How Frail It Is!

In the disruptions that are coming,
the Nebraska senator suggests

we must return the virtus (“manliness”)
to virtue. Virtue, in the narrative,

is the province of the male. Virtus
also signifies “strength, capacity.”

Logic breeds its own capacity.
Virtue is the windowshade

behind which the domestic slave
must make do by sleeping

on a pile of oily overalls.
A foundation is often

the hobbyhorse of tyranny,
a low-slung bridge poking

through the graphs which document
every challenge to a martinet’s sermon.

 

Tom Daley is the author of House You Cannot Reach—Poems in the Voice of My Mother and Other Poems (FutureCycle Press, 2015). His poetry has appeared in Harvard Review, Massachusetts Review, 32 Poems, Fence, Denver Quarterly, Crazyhorse, Barrow Street, Prairie Schooner, Witness, Poetry Ireland Review, and other journals, as well as in the anthologies Hacks: Ten Years on Grub Street (Random House, 2007); Poets for Haiti (Yileen Press, 2010); The Body Electric (CreateSpace, 2013); and Luminous Echoes (Into the Void, 2017). He leads writing workshops in the Boston area and online for poets and writers working in creative prose.

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