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Two flags nuzzle each other in the desultory gust
because they are
fleeing the trees, who are cruel to one another,
shading their neighbors to death
a mixed bag
advocating small business in a loose confederation.
The flags don’t give any shade at all.
On the anniversary of our country
we throw dynamite at the air
we build into.
*
Daylight savings. A beeline
to a sea lion, as the children’s song extols, or is it
a beeline to a scallion?
You hear your own accent—
or
a child makes an error to see if you’re listening.
A heartfelt counterfeit.
*
A cough muffled
in its own sputum’s
repeated
in the next throat:
a family of coughs comes
to couch in us
while the sun rises
over the church,
treetops’ psych ops
combusting all over
the ground
tasked
with a snowdrop.
Source: Poetry (December 2008).
Biography
Ange Mlinko is the author of three books, Shoulder Season (Coffee House Press, 2010), Starred Wire (Coffee House Press, 2005), which was a National Poetry Series winner in 2004 and a finalist for the James Laughlin Award, and Matinees (Zoland Books, 1999). In 2009, she won the Randall Jarrell Award in Criticism. Mlinko was born in Philadelphia, and has worked in Brooklyn, Providence, Boston, and Morocco. She has taught poetry at . . .
Poems by Ange Mlinko
Poem Categorization
SUBJECT Social Commentaries
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