“Send in the Clowns” is Chris Muravez‘s vivid & irreverent poem from our Winter 2017 issue.

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PATROLS OF POPPY COLOR AND
kicked up under boot there
was once life no sunlight
in grand emoticons slightly bored
by rumors or mirrors.

Nothing. Not flower panties in early
morning sex scenes pursed for fucking.
There is no revolution. Deception by desire
and i fucking hate how sloppy my agency has become.

Flying fish stargaze briefly like mental notes
of we who have escaped the anthropocene.
Art is the new ark. Data mining and limp
dicks can’t stop it. Two breeding pairs
of every unstable mammal. They’ve covered
their perfection from shame. They’re as
invalid and embellished as a family of rabbits
praying the rosary
asking god and jesu christo
to clean this poet’s filthy mouth.

Tempus Fuckit.

Sideshow clowns squeeze through spandex
so sad they’ve lost light like genocide
and everyone in the museum is so white
so sans jouissance
so sans petit mort.

This crusade of fun passes out
piss cups for communion
for throats so rich with blood
their owners beg their rotten guts shut.
The body ceases to function
but they’re already dead.

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CHRIS MURAVEZ is a veteran and a poet who is tired of his own petulance. He is working on his MFA at the University of Notre Dame, where he spends most days locked in a dungeon waiting for the end of the world.