Cody Walker




Mad Here or in Heaven


He thought he saw a Clouded Leopard
     Roar a mighty roar:
He looked again, and found it was
     La catastrophe du jour.
“The moon’s a dead thing in the sky—
     A crime we’ll answer for.”

He thought he saw a Question Mark
     That mocked his Surest Claims:
He looked again, and found it was
     Jehovah, taking names.
“So here it is at last,” he whispered
     (Quoting Henry James).

He thought he saw a Dandelion
     Parachute to shore:
He looked again, and found it was
     His soul. I’ll underscore:
His soul’s comprised of tiny seeds
     That scatter. Nothing more.



Cody Walker’s most recent poetry collection, The Trumpiad, was published by Waywiser in 2017. (The book doubles as an ACLU fundraiser.) He’s also the author of two earlier collections: The Self-Styled No-Child (Waywiser, 2016) and Shuffle and Breakdown (Waywiser, 2008). His work appears in The New York Times Magazine, Slate, and The Best American Poetry (2015 and 2007). He lives in Ann Arbor, where he teaches English at the University of Michigan and co-directs the Bear River Writers’ Conference.








                                    

 

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