Homage to Muriel Rukeyser

Michael S. Begnal

 

 

Whose language is in the ascendant

whose content film poetry

happens out of bodies’ ideologies

after the belt goes

and the holder

 

whose ideologies’ language

changes on the tongue

or really never was what

but was new/s,

breath within the swelling chest

 

“my” cat breathes it

just as much as I do

has dreams as I do,

we twitch and snarl our fangs

as the mastiff clamps hard our neck/s

 

upon waking,

conspire under the moon’s blood red

to seize control of the means

of experience, the productio poetica,

             apartment by apartment

 

 

 

~~~~~

Michael S. Begnal has published the collections Future Blues (Salmon Poetry, 2012) and Ancestor Worship (Salmon Poetry, 2007), as well as the chapbook Mercury, the Dime (Six Gallery Press, 2005). He teaches at Duquesne University. His blog site is: www.mikebegnal.blogspot.com