What Rough Beast | Poem for June 24, 2017

Tom Daley
Pledge

I have neither given nor received
I have neither presented or secured.

I have given noon its broad disruption,
morning its secure equalities.

I know that transitions retire
before the confirmations do their lava stunts.

My heart is an extradition, my glands
reliquaries of king pins in the back alleys

where coat hangers smell of E. coli
and the students lift themselves

into the sweet deals of designation.
I will engage, I will unfund,

I will mortgage my toenails,
the inserts I used to cook

in the heat-treating oven.
I will leave before the coach comes calling

to pray over my lack of minutiae
and bad loans. He spoke to me once

in my room, and I wanted him to take
his shirt off so I could raid the tart

tent of his nipples with my eyes.
I am a distended pupil lost

in the shell corporation. I swear
these forms are complicated.

Later, for tariffs. Later, for more staff.
That’s an infection I forgot about,

a new regime that will drive my tooth
decay all night long.

 

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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