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Epistle

loneliness is next to godliness. i eat gods 
like you for breakfast, sir. old gods i stir 
into a roux into a good blood-root soup and
spoon into my children’s shining american 
mouths. my children don’t exist because 
i suck dicks like you for breakfast. my children 
don’t exist because i fear my progeny
might be like you, cowering acrid penis, 
 
mess of white nothing. so my family crossed 
an ocean hella long ago and left their rotting 
leather shoes behind. left their dead buried 
in hillsides, began to dream this new language.
 
i hate this language precisely for how it hides.
how it says freedom and always means die
 
    • Listen: sam sax reciting Epistle
sam sax

sam sax

sam sax is the author of Madness (Penguin, 2017) winner of The National Poetry Series and ‘Bury It’ (Wesleyan University Press, 2018) ...

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