What Rough Beast | Poem for December 12, 2017

Daniel Nester
Five States of the Resistance

1.
The blue-eyed radical says he’s a healer—
crystals, sayings, the works.

2.
The poet-prophet revolutionary
has a LinkedIn page—
it’s pretty fleshed out with endorsements
and pull-out quotes praising
his professionality.

3.
Here we go with another horse opera,
another newly vague co-dependent structure,
another skedaddle antihero cliché.

4.
A social media post shares the publication of a friend-of-a-friend’s book.
It’s a memoir on a big press about a dysfunctional family, worth of more than half a billion dollars. The author has employed the biggest book publicist in the country. The tour for the memoir on a big press about a dysfunctional family worth a half a billions dollars will take place exclusively at indie bookstores.

5.
The drinks I drank were compounds. They were air tosses
and crack-ups I would have years later.
I’m not lonesome anymore.
I’m just angry.

 

Daniel Nester is the author of Shader: 99 Notes on Car Washes, Making Out in Church, Grief, and Other Unlearnable Subjects (99: The Press, 2015), How to Be Inappropriate (Soft Skull Press, 2009), God Save My Queen: A Tribute (Soft Skull Press, 2003) and God Save My Queen II: The Show Must Go On (Soft Skull Press, 2004). He is the editor of The Incredible Sestina Anthology (Write Bloody Publishing, 2012). Nester teaches writing at The College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY.

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