Sampson Starkweather

VILLAINOUS SONG

any poem is a minor miracle
a rough song
for a rough life
what graces
obliterated beauty
like the gnawed-on edges of night
little puzzle pieces the dogs got
ahold of
we carry ’round
like dice, anchors, DNA
hematomas of love gone
listening to the radio in the woods
’til the tapes disintegrate
the dazed deer
over your shoulders
we tried to revive
in the headlights
the opening
of a song coming on
a brush against
a drum
stepping into public water
at night
to take change
from fountains
for gas money
these be the graces
goddamn
going to work
in the cheap blue suit of dusk
“ain’t that music pretty, boy”
and sometimes, enough

SAMPSON STARKWEATHER is the author of Song of Attention Deficit Disorder (Third Man Records, London), A Week in Late Capitalism / Ancient Capitalist Proverbs (Blush Lit), PAIN: The Board Game (Third Man Books), Until the Joy of Death Hits (Spork Press) and The First 4 Books of Sampson Starkweather (Birds, LLC), and many other limited-edition chapbooks from dangerous and/or defunct small presses. He is a founding editor of the small independent editor-run poetry press Birds, LLC. He lives in Brooklyn.