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Sunday, November 13, 2005

MUD

by Laura Madeline Wiseman


Paris is burning

not of balls

no transgendered murders

this year they burn the ghettos

boys electric heated

fear running

over steel currents

like lovers kisses

if you break it

you can privatize it

the police feel hoods of youth

if they’re damp

they've all been steeling


and then I hear bodies

igniting in Fallujah

with white phosphorus

the skin gone the clothes intact

dressed for their own funeral

whisky pete wilco

obscuration or

incineration

the stuff slips

though your mask

mud stops it

by then it’s too late

they’re all terrorists


Laura Madeline Wiseman is an award winning writer teaching at the University of Arizona. Her works have appeared in 13th Moon, The Comstock Review, Fiction International, Poetry Motel, Driftwood, apostrophe, Moondance, Familiar, Spire Magazine, Colere, Clare, Flyway Literature Review, Nebula, and other publications. She is the Literary Editor for IntheFray and a regular contributor to Empowerment4Women.