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How a Country Can Lay Claim To Having People

By Kent Shaw
Poetry•Vol. XXV No. 3 (Fall 2012)

In this country, everyone depends entirely too much on conjunctions,
          mainly the “and,”
but also the conjunctions that indicate a clear choice is right in front of us,
like frisson or feverish, like bombardiers or exclamation points.
We are fashionable. And supremely collapsible.
We were designed by toymakers to appear very enthusiastic.
Sometimes we pile into the same room and we play this game we call prison.
Sometimes we’re just happy.
We don’t know what that part’s called.

We like to believe it has something to do with Mathematics.
We are Americans.
And in our land, we have tendons that connect the different parts of houses
          and neighborhoods.
Lovers connect themselves at the privates using a specialized tendon that’s
          molecular in its effectiveness.
We are scientists of the conjunction.
Epicureans. Pedestrians. Molecularians.

So what if the earth is an abundance of too many complexities,
we have each other, and that’s a complexity enough!
You and I. Me and You. We and we.

We’ll be grateful someone has invented Mathematics because it keeps track
          of everything.
We’ll have to wait to be sad until they finally invent real sadness.

Kent Shaw's first book, Calenture, was published by University of Tampa Press. His poems have appeared in The Believer, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, Boston Review, and elsewhere. He is currently an Assistant Professor at West Virginia State University.

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