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Poem for an Election Year The Politics of Bindweed Maxine Kumin november 1996 I have lived all season among the bindweed. I have spied upon their silent Anschluss, the bugles of their Xowers, the dark guy wires they put down into earth from which to Xing slim vines that burgeon into airy traps. At eye level I have seen them strangle aster, milkweed, buttercup; I have taken note of their seemingly random entanglement by tendril of the whole drowsy meadow. My own ankles have been tugged at and held fast by these fanatics. These barbarian cousins of morning glory mean to smother the clover, drive out the livestock, send scouts to inWltrate the next hayWeld, exploit the ties of family and class until they rule from hedgerow to hedgerow wherefore all season on my hands and knees I have ripped out roots, stems, ringlets and blossoms. I have pursued every innocent threadlike structure to its source, then plucked it. My chosen task is to reestablish the republic of grasses. Black on a Saturday Night Rita Dove june 1998 This is no place for lilac or somebody on a trip to themselves. Hips are an asset here, and color calculated to Xash lemon bronze cerise 220 part 11 parading poetry in the course of a dip and turn. Beauty’s been caught lying and the truth’s rubbed raw: Here, you get your remorse as a constitutional right. It’s always what we don’t fear that happens, always not now and why are you people acting this way (meaning we put in petunias instead of hydrangeas and reject ecru as a fashion statement). But we can’t do it—naw, because the wages of living are sin and the wages of sin are love and the wages of love are pain and the wages of pain are philosophy and that leads deWnitely to an attitude and an attitude will get you nowhere fast so you might as well keep dancing dancing till tomorrow gives up with a shout, ’cause there is only Saturday night, and we are in it— black as black can, black as black does, not a concept nor a percentage but a natural law. The Communist Party Philip Levine november 1998 Seven single, formal men slowly circling the scarred ping-pong table with its sagging net, with its bottle of pink Michigan wine, a plate of stale Saltines, the cheese long gone, Levine / The Communist Party 221 ...

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