David Bartone


This Machine Kills Fascists



Also having sent my body out on the minted water—

mind strident, mind green—like a canoe gaining drift

toward the shoelace factory, I loved a woman.

Summer we made a joke of our bodies as we loved

each other. We chased afternoon and caught

sometimes a cool in the shade of it, and away.

The animals slept and we baked rhubarb

in the heat, made up our minds

about all the things. We even dared political. Kiss more than money

away. Do you know how many centuries I loved a woman

whose name, though I do not remember, I waft in vain?

A secret lets her name vanish. I deny everything and nothing

vanishes. I spend nothing. It is hazy and I have nothing

I’m willing to spend. I am full of prose. I have that to chip. I guess I could

get rid of my books. I have no proof they exist.

Only a few lines of verse I am soon going to túrn on. 

I have just authored another century

of Perseus, crickets and emptiness, the center of any old lake.