by Mark Steven
My friends’ kids
can’t breathe without masks
but Amazon now sells this
motherfucking air purifier
that uses anion sterilization
to “improve overall health”
and here you are all boomer
a flood of cortisol hormones
on the “perfect gift for baby
father family pet lover – ”
so if unblackened lungs
now inhale negative atoms
from the respiratory silo
of your protectorate biome
then maybe you just need to go
feetfirst squealing orbital
down some kerosene mulcher
like katabasis but for CEOs
as our brains and nerves and sinew
a surplus unmade from stinking tallow
compost into the marsupial
undergrowth of my homelands.
Mark Steven is the author of Red Modernism: American Poetry and the Spirit of Communism (Johns Hopkins) and Splatter Capital (Repeater), and is now writing a book on the historical semantics of class war. He teaches at the University of Exeter.
