What Rough Beast | Poem for February 10, 2019

John Emil Vincent
The hour between wolf and dog

In the near future there are no lapels, barely collars.

And clouds don’t look like anything but clouds.

If hunger woke you, reason armed you, panic set you on beasts, logic made fire, habit spun the spit, rigor cut bite-sized chunks, fame chewed, history swallowed, now: wisdom requires you starved.

A sinking ragdoll clutching its child.

John Emil Vincent is the author of Excitement Tax (DC Books, 2018), short-listed for the Quebec Writers’ Federation First Book Prize, and Ganymede’s Dog, forthcoming from McGill-Queen’s University Press in fall 2019. He has published several books of criticism and is a trained archivist. Vincent lives in Montreal and teaches at Concordia University.

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