A POEM BY SEAN KILPATRICK


          (from Thank You, Steel China)

          Dear Inventor of the Triple Tree, Steel China, Surgeon’s Hall,

          “Imma boo hoo up and down the street for those that hang,
          dress my tears in little suits and call them you and you and you…”

          - from Fight for Steel China

          Your landmines watch us sleep, doctor.
          The sky crossed with bombs. We love you
          here. We’re your biggest fans.

          Economy was your thing back then.
          Your dreams were made of whispers. (We keep them numbered.)
          I know, I know -- Commission from the mayor,
          oil knives for feet, make the prison shine.
          But have you seen three people dipping into the noose hold hands?
          It fills your heart with good silverware.

          We send you letters from the stove.

          In Surgeon’s Hall it is cold and bombs announce their arrival.
          We give them what little of us we can spare.
          Our meat is so valuable. Our meat
          is so valuable because we wear it.
          Even our mirrors are shaped like dollar signs.
          But don’t worry, everyone’s paycheck involves
          disembowelment, castration, bad music.

          But we are poor here and tremble
          in closets. We bite our arms and swallow
          all day. We go to your statue
          and cry, come home, starve some more.

          But Thank You is teaching self-defense to the cows.
          And just the other day Mr. Ostrich robbed a convenience store.
          He was bored.
          And look, even this girl’s suicide note reads:
          learn to sing.

          Yours quite literally,
          The animals of Steel China



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Sean Kilpatrick's poems and short stories have been published in Juked, elimae, Snow Monkey, Exquisite Corpse, Arsenic Lobster, Unlikely Stories, NOÖ Journal, Stirring, etc. He was raised in Detroit and maintains The Anorexic Museum


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