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  • Night
  • Joseph Lease (bio)

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Property is death: they had aBody crammed in a mailbox andIt was just a blue suit withBones sticking out:

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“Just    Say missiles,    Just        Say drones” [End Page 130]

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she said, she said joy, she said voice,blue-green voice; she said violet, bluewind pushes, river light, birches, shesaid,

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your stain of faded storm light in my mouth:heartland, methland: over the river andthrough the woods: I’m writing inside death,I’m in the room—”we made this sky ofdrones to eat your eyes”—”the sky is money,privatize the sky”—angel, say angel, yourocean dies, [End Page 131]

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        we’re all dead, he says,        so, yes, joy, the lostone, the sweet fool, and fathers lost inblowing snow, and mothers lost in blowingleaves, when the soul opens, there will bea cheap hotel: dead face, open mouth, deadface: the first snow and wrapping paper:

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we become dark matter, it has to be that,she said, she told me, she promised—keptsaying it has to be—no getting out of theuniverse—we have to be something—            he’s                        crying            (God)                        “home”— [End Page 132]

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        revolution:everything        means youin that        dying:        what isyour face—        what youthrew out— [End Page 133]

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more songs, more flame, more strange bluelight, your ocean dies, and Google owns thelight inside your eyes—democracy is resourcewars, democracy is buying—(“clean coal” atemy face)

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“Just        Say missiles,        Just            Say drones” [End Page 134]

Joseph Lease

Joseph Lease’s critically acclaimed books of poetry include Testify (Coffee House Press) and Broken World (Coffee House Press). Two of Lease’s longer poems were anthologized in Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology (Norton). Lease’s poems have also been anthologized in The Best American Poetry 2002 and by the Academy of American Poets.

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