Evening Will Come: A Monthly Journal of Poetics (Issue 32, August 2013—Women Looking at Vispo Issue)

Sharon Mesmer
On Maria Damon’s Open Up and Bleed

Maria Damon
Open Up and Bleed: for James Osterberg Jr.

These People

What comes of the work

of an undependable people

What comes of the work

of a people upped

What becomes

What comes of the undependable

work of a people

What comes of a people

What becomes the work

of a puny people

a people who dunno

a denuded, undoing people

What comes of these

people

What comes of the work

of a people whose pope is

an old purple bedpan

Oh, these people are dead

doable

What becomes of these

bald, deepened-upon

people

What comes of the work

of these stupid, duped people

these aboundingly nebulous

people

these people we are completely unable

to depend upon

these befuddled

cornpone people

these people peddling the cold lopped

bones of someone’s

dead dog

These unneeded people

And their bones

What becomes of these

unneeded people

these deadened, pleading people

and their cold useless bones

these people who are really

just pulp

to be landed upon

Pudenda-Bo-Peeps dandled and bleeped upon

in a crude wood-paneled pub

Oh, and their bop

What comes of the work of these

bounden, beholden people

these deeply laden

undependable

plebes who bode

LOUD

LOUD

all through the dull blue

lube nodule

fondue

These people

they suck

They ape our apples, our blonde

upland debs

they jog in our snow

mow our lawns

pick pears

they fence our dense sewing

with sow jowls

These people are a fucking mess

a peepshow of molt-leeching

muppets

and machetes, someplace

a face to whoop-stomp into

a soft weeping people

a smote, fleeing, schlepping people

schlepping fleas

mewling and

opposing the flow

moldy towels

soggy shoelaces

and damp stinking mops

Our machetes

to their peaches

These people

What comes

of the work of these goddamn people

these fucking people

these unbecoming

people

just what comes

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