The Age of Increment
        —after Percy Bysshe Shelley

Liberticide optimized in an age
of glint democracy-a pretty line
for a pretty time continuously engaged—
the King's flag flown above the sign

of the dove—our hawkish Queens keening
the horn on a third front—one occupation
blunts another and another—meaning
gummed in purple doublings, set to stun

dialogue to silence—to recession
from attention to what matters, dies—will,
individual, broken by the extension
of hope and its perhaps inevitable

dilution—interest dipped, tinted, rinsed, and fenced,
looped and linked like a tarnished chain reaction.

Tweet
Copyright © 2014 Anna Maria Hong All rights reserved
from Beloit Poetry Journal
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission