A Plague Upon
- A Plague Upon
Theme’s a dream, a scheme, a meme
Plies, motes, strokes breeding to be repeated,Seasons of the mind, reasons to commune … you who bark and squall … dark in the center of day.
Replication steers determined,Focused on the mark …
Anything, anyone, anywhereCatch a speeding meme and clenchbetween your teeth to tweet,tweet, to let your keepers know …
Oh, PapagenoPa Pa Pa Pa Pa PaPapageno Papageno
Repeat after me
Defeat the meme [End Page 58] Unseat the memeMake sure you see what jumps the gate
Place it near your scopeSmear it on your lensSpread it on the rug
We are famine, victim, cursed with bounty,saviors of none, carriers and carters,destroyers with degenerated eyes andstenotic ears declaiming: here, here, here. [End Page 59]
Anna Rabinowitz’s most recent volume of poetry is Present Tense. She is currently working on a monodrama based on her previous book, The Wanton Sublime. Rabinowitz’s Darkling is available in a German edition from Luxbooks and as a CD from Albany Records in its incarnation as a multimedia opera. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Fore-Word Magazine’s Best Poetry Book of the Year for Darkling. Rabinowitz received her MFA from Columbia University and is editor emerita of American Letters & Commentary and a vice president of the Poetry Society of America.
