Shook Music

By LESLIE MCGRATH

 

Follow me, Imagineers! We’ll make noise

from these dread instruments, shook music

loud as the hell we’ve climbed from, visible

only to the i in piano, the eye in the oboe.

 

We’ll hoist a cheesecake by an iron hook

and swing blindly at it with our puny claws.

We’ll howl under its influences, meet cute

fuck, and forget before the trembling’s done.

 

Once finished, we’ll flame out, God or no.

Still, we’ll take our dead with us, our legions

with us, and because there’s always

room for piety, our greatness with us.

 

Leslie McGrath is the author of Opulent Hunger, Opulent Rage, a poetry collection, and the forthcoming Out From the Pleiades: a picaresque novella in verse.

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Shook Music

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