L.S. Klatt

A SUDDEN UNSPEAKABLE INDIGNATION

Grasshoppers amass; the fields thick with infantry

The confederates are expert swordsmen, cutting a swath
of goldenrod with their mandibles

I, who jaw in the opposite direction, meet them  

My tongue is tungsten
It obliterates the swarm; it mows down stragglers

But Manhattan is where steel chokes, tempered
And thus it blasphemes

Or so I said to History as she cleaned our terrarium
But I meant:

Let us say no more of stonewalls, pickets

SEMICONDUCTORS IN THE BREADBASKET

Steamboats in a cornfield

What they take, took:
bushels of souls

I see myself as a child. Once a child
always a child

a towhead among smokestacks

And there’s Lincoln with his stovepipe hat
above the silks

almost coppery in the sunset

All I survey is corn, the gemstone of the grains

That is, until Carbon washes over
in shocks

So curious to find my currency now among stars

Head in the clouds, the up & up