No Machine

As a child I believed no machine
could hurt you, that even the big
crushing ones would stop, would
have to stop, heads bowed, hats
removed, as the royal procession
of a single hand, divinely unaware,
passed among the common columns
of steel and teeth—that no man near
starvation ate berries at night only
to learn their poisonous truth
in the morning, dying, dying
in the snow, before poison, truth,
could be safely passed from mind
to mind, their deadly power wrapped
tight in the guttural cloth of warning.
Now, with the first faint cluckings
of tongues and sighs of the gathering
crowd filtering down, I wait to be discovered
beneath the snows of my life, desperately aware,
ravaged by the machines of yours.

 

After a rather extended and varied second childhood in New Orleans, Matt Dennison’s work has appeared in Rattle, Bayou Magazine, Redivider, Natural Bridge, The Spoon River Poetry Review and Cider Press Review, among others. He has also made short films with Michael Dickes, Swoon, Marie Craven and Jutta Pryor.

Bill Wolak has just published his fifteenth book of poetry entitled The Nakedness Defense with Ekstasis Editions. His collages have appeared recently in Naked in New Hope 2018, The 2019 Seattle Erotic Art Festival, Poetic Illusion, The Riverside Gallery, Hackensack, NJ, the 2019 Dirty Show in Detroit, 2018 The Rochester Erotic Arts Festival, and The 2018 Montreal Erotic Art Festival.