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DANNIEL SCHOONEBEEK

Whole Foods

--for M. Gertzog

 
Officers please

should you

see a man

shoot past

you hair

on fire

what skin 
 
he has left

it peels

off his back

like cheese

cloth a pitch

fork stuck

in each thigh

and bag

after white

plastic bag

our swiss

ruby chard

our swollen

mangosteens

our chicory

root and his

rutebagas

the humboldt

fog he loves

his black

forest worms

our yellow

and red ones

our good

korean pears

his goat’s

milk gouda

his pignolis

olives so fat

you could

smother

your child

to sleep

with one all

units you

see him fire

our wild rice

from his sawed

off shotgun

pour nectar

down his

throat and chant

in some dead

language what

to your ears

you’d swear

it was lines

one and two

you learned

by heart

in grade

school man’s

first no

the fruit of

disobedience

that fair

tree the last

word who

speaks it

a black sleet

in god’s

land to wipe

out the kings

the line

how does

the line end

the night

who will

the night end
  


42   The Paris-American

Picture
Danniel Schoonebeek was born in the Catskills. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Tin House, Boston Review, Fence, Gulf Coast, Colorado Review,
Guernica
, Denver Quarterly, Crazyhorse, Kenyon Review, La Petite Zine, The Awl, Publishers Weekly, and elsewhere. He writes a monthly column on poetry for The American Reader, hosts the Hatchet Job reading series in Brooklyn, and works as associate editor at PEN America.


   
   Next week's poet:

 Meghann Plunkett
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