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We Travel Like Other People

By William Burke
Poetry•Vol. XXIV No. 2 (Summer 2011)

We havoc like other people, but we return in poopwear.  As if parasailing
Is the way of the clouds.  Tonsils have burned out our loved holes in the
      snatch of the straw, beaten on top of roots of the trees.
And we said to our wives: go on giving bitches to people like us
      for hundreds of years so we can complete this junk
      of poems to the honor of a country, to a meter of a handshake.
We travel into the carnage of plums, strip in the tent of the
      prophets and “come out” in the speech of the Japs.
We measure space with a hoopoe’s dick (of course) + sing to white away the
      distance and cleanse the night of the moon.
Your path is a thong so dream of seven women to bear this thong
On your shoulders.  Shake them.  Palm them so they connote their
      names and who’ll buy/sell the mother of the boy of Galilee.
We have a country of Turks.  Speak Mr. Peak so I can put my rod into the
      tummy of a stone.
We have a country of Kurds.  Speak Mr. Peak so we may know the end of
      this hat trick.

William Burke is from Portland, Maine. He has two manuscripts, Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle and Lord Sugar, under consideration at various presses.

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