Originally posted 8/2016. Revised.
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Spell it with two guns,
a coat of whitewash,
three picket fences
and a wolverine trapped
under a left thumbnail.
Spell it with seven dirty words
and rigor mortis laid thick
between adobe bricks.
Spell it with fifty-seven apologies
flavored with forgetting,
sixty-three apologies blind to remorse,
one hundred and eleven apologies
offered on a dagger’s tip.
Spell it fourteen ninety-two,
original thirteen,
broken five hundred and sixty nine.
Spell it three-fifths,
spell it six-nineteen.
Spell it nine-eleven.
Spell it with a toxic cloud,
an unrestrained flag,
a lowered boom.
Spell it with twenty-one more guns
and a Nagasaki blister.
Spell it with moon rocks,
tent cities, caged kids,
dead kids, dead eyes
dotted with good flowers.
Spell it with a burr.
Spell it with a brogue,
a lilt, a bang-up job of trying to deliver it
unaccented.
Spell it with bison flanks quivering.
Spell it with pink dawn over gray streets
and a boat swift-rocking
down a snow fed river.
Spell American
with a cauldron. A melting pot
if you prefer. A bullet mold,
a fireproof suffrage, a vote
for steam over simmer,
a last summer of drowsing bees.
It’s not like anyone ever knew
a right way to pronounce it.
Dark Matter 