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Wednesday, November 02, 2016

TOO LATE, WE THOUGHT

by Lisa Vihos


July-August 2016 issue, The Atlantic


It was that autumn of hurrication
and blusterment, when kings fought
for their crowns, and beasticals awoke
to shake loose their brassy manes.
Geese flew every which way but south.

There was hatertude in the air
and a forbading sense of miserdom.
There was a feeling that something
had been lost; I’ll call it humankindlyness,
gone the way of the Mohican and the dodo.

It was a time when be equaled seems
and no one knew what the definition
of is was, or will be, or will have been.
It was a topsy-turvy time of extreme poshity
and abjectionable going-withoutedness.

The best minds of our generation
went missing in a moragmire
of interpetude and degenerance,
feigning some kind of wonderful;
some kind of altruistica merviosa.

It was a time when lachromosis set in
and a distinct hardening of arterial material.
We thought we had the answer. We thought
we could fix things with a bludgeon. We thought,
but it was not enough, and it came too late
to rectifiliate our dementia.


Lisa Vihos is a poet living near Lake Michigan in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. She is the Poetry and Arts Editor of Stoneboat Literary Journal and an organizer for 100 Thousand Poets for Change. She recently received a grant from her undergraduate alma mater, Vassar College, to design and build a children's reading garden in Malawi in 2017.