“Politicks,” Poem, Jack Granath.

Politicks

The body politic is violent 

               -ly sick,

it comes back to its vomit

               and sniffs,

it prances in the ditch

but can’t resist,

               it dips

to sniff again—     

oh, the attraction,    

to be sick and to revel in it,

to vomit and find nourishment there,

if only as a possibility,

to sniff and play        

with the idea        

of living a closed system

without those immigrants

fresh food, fresh water,

               fresh air.

Jack Granath is a library director in Kansas. His poetry has appeared in Poetry East, New York Quarterly, and North American Review among other journals and magazines. He studied English and Film at the University of Michigan and Library Science at the University of Missouri. Poetry for him most often involves an engagement with time. It moves on the surface of the water along with the rest of the world’s wrack, but it also manifests a power to arrest. It happens where water meets stone. But is that true of political poetry? Maybe less. Certainly, some great political poems, such as William Stafford’s “At the Bomb Testing Site” (the one about the lizard panting there) work that shadow of the stone on the water, but many make their way differently—through outburst, anger, mockery, disgust. David Ignatow complaining about peace in “All Quiet.” Antler shouting down factories. Carolyn Forché’s “The Colonel.”