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      April 2, 2017HomesicknessRobert Peake

      Perched in the crotch of a tree
      contrails race toward intersection
      drawing sutures across the sky
      tightening our hold on the narrative
      that the operation has been a success
      the patient is recovering nicely—
      O exquisite corpse of my homeland,
      fed upon by crows and financiers,
      it was October, and the freezing rain
      had not yet begun to decay you,
      though your eyes were sunk deep
      and your frail scissor limbs
      grew inarticulate with pointing.
      Whose fingers are left, unburnt?
      Who is not wincing at the calendar,
      huddled around a cackling fire,
      counting the fuel in the woodpile?
      How long will we breathe, mouth-on-mouth
      into the blue lips of our forefathers,
      the only family we have ever known?

      from Poets Respond

      Robert Peake

      “It is strange to be an American watching America from afar right now. I live in England, near the city of St. Albans, which has been continuously inhabited since Roman times. I often wonder what it must have been like to be a Roman living in Britain around the time of the fall of the Roman Empire, as its great institutions were continuously plundered. Yet Britain has also been overtaken by bigotry and fear, and recently enacted Article 50 of the Lisbon treaty to break away from the European Union. I am now a citizen of not one but two countries whose global brand is essentially, ‘Let us be a warning to you all.’”

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