Poem of the Week: Melissa Tuckey

          

   

Dick Cheney's New Heart Speaks  

 

A roadside bomb is planted in every chest

I was a pea sized fist in the dirt of a man

who had half your brains

but he was good

The heart does not relinquish its domain

Your blood confesses to every crime

Don't expect me to be patient with you

Your DNA has struck a compromise  

with the purgatory of souls

Your fingerprints engraved with

names of the dead

Have a seat Mr. Cheney while

your skin

reads its final testimony 

-Melissa Tuckey  

Used by permission.

Melissa Tuckey is author of Tenuous Chapel, selected by Charles Simic for the ABZ Press first book prize (May 2013) and Rope As Witness (Pudding House Press, 2007). Her honors and awards include a Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center Winter Fellowship, and writing fellowships from DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and Ohio Arts Council, as well as a residency at Blue Mountain Center.

 

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