Thomas Fink and Maya Diablo Mason


RED ANTS

The best reflections he knew how to cultivate:
five-generation barbeque in a red, white, and
baby blue bubble, hundreds of feet underground.
Sublime panorama of heroism buttressing our
choicest department stores and truck-stops.
Yes, that war.
The one with serrated demonology.
Disgusting aftertaste.
What fathered the disgust?
Millions of ants are marching on my great
lawn toward the house that turns out to be a rental.


BEE 8

She wrote a story about how you were dying.
Sounds like somebody is shaking.
They lied about you when you were applying for a job as a delivery boy.
What is your future?
There are keys now if you get into trouble.
Why are you still smoking?
I asked your doctor, the bone man, and I pinned him down.
They have a funny way of weighing things.
Keep it going;
keep it growing.
After we die, you don’t need the money anyway.



Thomas Fink's fifth book of poetry, Clarity and Other Poems, was published by Marsh Hawk Press in Spring, 2008. A Different Sense of Power (Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2001) is his most recent book of criticism, and in 2007, he and Joseph Lease co-edited Burning Interiors: David Shapiro’s Poetry and Poetics. Heather McHugh and David Lehman selected his poem, “Yinglish Strophes IX,” for The Best American Poetry 2007 (Scribner’s). His paintings hang in various collections.

Maya Diablo Mason was published in The First Hay(na)ku Anthology (Meritage, 2006) and her collaborative work has appeared in Otoliths and is forthcoming in 21 Stars Review, BlazeVox, Of(f) Course, and Marsh Hawk Review. A high school student in Long Island, New York, she plans to pursue a career in drama, visual art, or writing.

 
 
 
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