Category Archives: Map

No. 38 : CCLXXXIII Plate

YellowShank

Version | “Yellow Shank” [1836] John Audubon

The yellow shank stands
on a grassy shore Carolinian;
studies shapes Linnean
past parallels that step a glassy lake.

Moss plumbs perpendicular
to the angles of gloss and bird
that soon will stalk to the edge and stir.

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Response in Pointed Format

5Justice

The problem with the death penalty:
one cannot exonerate the dead.

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Salaam, on Trump:

q2l

Thirty-four years ago, your full-page ad stated, in all caps: “CIVIL LIBERTIES END WHEN AN ATTACK ON OUR SAFETY BEGINS.”

You were wrong then, and you are wrong now. The civil liberties of all Americans are grounded in the U.S. Constitution, and many of us fight every day to uphold those rights, even in the face of those like you who seek to obliterate them.

q2r

— Yusef Abdus Salaam
[one of the Exonerated Five] —

NBC

NBC

Red & blue pushpin N
trapezoid, the bedrock
peacock, tail broadly cast
in a rainbow splash of
six feathered divisions,
beak facing eastern dawn:
ground nester roosting dendroid—
an on-screen-bug network plug.

NTrapezoid

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8B[2022]

8Billion

Demographics:
population distribution
global snowball to
8 billion on the Ides of
November, doubling
in the short wait of
48 years.

Remember,
the 1st billion
had a leadup of
2 million years
mostly lost in
prehistorical asides.

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Only the Lonely

SinatraClown

Darkness dances round the flickering torch,
sad clown under the lamppost, the hours small:
spotlight in a nightclub   | plays within plays |
large orchestra arranged intimately
for the complexity of sadness sublime.

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Shostakovich

Shostakovich

Twice denunciated: regularly mailing a card
to test the postal service
—a reminder to write music for the masses;
measured, the response to just criticism.
Not an opium addict:
no belief in God, and very sorry about it
—note the quoting of self.

A tsar falls from heaven hanging
o’er the May Day march toward socialism
| steps out of Chaos |.
Metronomic, the tics to the hammering tocks
of clocks interlocking, sickles cycle
in the fields of crystal harmony—
fist-pumps of the workers.

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Earthrise

Earthrise

Version: William Anders – NASA Apollo

No shell, just membrane
between the void and the mundane.
chaotic blue against blank vista,
all those stars, just wishes,
makes for an activist.
From vantage of a dead moon:
the pale blue dot—is all we’ve got.

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Macbeth

Macbeth

Sisters three
stir the pot,
the bloody plot.

| a pricking fate |

The wings of the
raven
blot out the sun:
the bloody deed is
done.

Macbeth
haunted by death
and shrinking
heaven;
banging on
hell’s gate.

q2l

Tis the eye of childhood / That fears a painted devil.

— Lady Macbeth —

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