Mark Yakich

 

EPISTEMOLOGY

 

And Daughter said, “Only girls are allowed in my room.”
And Son said, “I love Mommy, not Daddy.”

And Mommy said, “You can love Daddy, too.”
And Daughter and Son said, “No!” and “No!”

What love on each other’s hands and buttocks.
Appreciate with all your heart the love

That runneth from the penis, the justice
That greaseth the great vaginal walls.

Mother, you shined in the bedroom.
Father, you were always too tired to carry on an affair.

Nothing has an ideal form, and no child
Wants to get caught being too good.

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BIBLICAL

 

Just shy of the surface, fish rise
And die gleaming more
Beautifully when belly up.

The moon kisses the sun’s ass;
God sees to it. Loneliness,
My Love, isn’t so big after all.

Take faithful Job: in the end,
He got back a wife and children,
Just not the same wife and children

He began with. Nothing’s ever
Too wrong or right. Go ahead,
Hold your breath as long as you can.

Once the fig leaf falls off,
All metaphor is disgusting.

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MARK YAKICH‘s most recent book is Poetry: A Survivor’s Guide (Bloomsbury 2015). He lives in New Orleans.

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Read more by Mark Yakich:

 
Essay “What Is a Poem?” at The Atlantic
Two poems at Poets.org
Visual poems at OmniVerse