71 words
The silverfish climb walls
and crawl the faded floors;
eat peeled wallpaper, balls
of lint in broken drawers;
across veneer, find pairs
of thick and chipped wenge legs,
art deco chaise lounge chairs,
upholstery now in rags.
And under the gold transom,
the stained glass, bas-reliefs
of pelicans held in ransom—
enter and exit thieves—
three archeologists:
Jamal, Kordell, and Floyd
who count on their proud lists
Zimbabwe and Detroit.
9 July 2017
1 comment
Wow I like. This may be your best yet. I agree we need to bring back the lost art of invective in poetry. Horace and martial have a number of poems excoriating political figures and private individuals. Aristobulus, the first attested Greek lyricist, so lampooned his exgirlfriend that she hung herself! The tendency seems to have fallen out of European poetry in the modern era.
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