M A R G I E  The American Journal of Poetry     www.margiereview.com

Published Annually in the Fall                                     MARGIE  P. O. BOX 250, CHESTERFIELD, MO 63006-0250

if you operate the steam shovel’s

claw behind the glass

just    perfectly,

you may snatch up

Officer J.D. Tippet’s

blood-encrusted Dallas PD Shield,

a clown nose

from the makeup kit of John Wayne Gacy,

a bottle of patoulie oil

originally found in Leslie Van Houten’s

left coat pocket a week or so after

Sharon Tate, expecting, was butchered alive.

And see?  a tooth from the melon

sized head of Theophilus Eugene

“Bull” Connor.  A dime

from John D. Rockefeller,

a genuine packet of Atomic

Fireworks “Nigger Chasers”,

a slice of a West Virginia

coal miner’s lung preserved

on a microscope slide, an unopened

rubber from Al

Capone’s crocodile skin wallet.

Maybe,

even a blood-soaked yarmulke

stained with the brains of a 13 year old

Jew walking home to supper who

suddenly learned which streets

in Queens

were for The Sons of Italy

and which streets

were for kikes.  And,

if you dig deeper: the remains of 2

aliens stored cryogenically

by The United States Department 

of The Air Force, and a coin commemorating 

an 1816 Treaty with the Cherokee Nation, and

an owlishly twisted neck bone and skull

of a 9 year old boy who once played

and lived in Corinth, Mississippi,

a gook’s dick lying on the bottom

of a formaldehyde-filled

Mason Jar in the basement

of an alcoholic corporal’s house

trailer in Viburnum, Missouri, or maybe

the other two  

gunmen

Justice Earl forgot about in his count,

a buffalo’s head, a holdup note

disguised as a credit default swap,

a partial birth abortion Lotto ticket

stamped: NOT A WINNER—all these

for a measly two-bits, from the midway

of a two bit traveling carnival

in a two bit chaw-‘backy hick town,

in a two bit shit-show “Winner Takes All” country

not unlike our own,

                                                 Mister.

ROBERT NAZARENE is Founding Editor of Margie/The American Journal of Poetry.  His first book of poems, CHURCH, is new in 2006.  His poetry has appeared in Arts & Letters, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cimarron Review, Green Mountains Review, The Hollins Critic, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner and elsewhere.