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Mark Jackley

 

     

 

               Broken Family 

 

 

Broken mouth too. Broken vocabulary. 

Tomorrow when I speak it will be my heart whistling 

 

through a hole that opens in my throat, a song I heard 

in a country cemetery where the dead of war rise up 

 

as little American flags. All cloth, no stick. Top-heavy. 

They looked like seagulls wobbling by a dumpster far from water,

 

flapping in a language only they could understand, wondering what exactly

the deal is with the wind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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