Margie — Blackbird Archive

← v2n2, Fall 2003

Things turn ugly. Call it the entropy of beauty.

Just when the dance gets hot, somebody flashes a knife.

Just when the night sky emerges moonless from the smudge

Of twilight, a siren sounds and everyone goes under.

In the dark, O Jesus is the password. You said it, pal.

When the lights come on: blood on the sheets.

Come out of the closet with your blackjack

And your bottle of bleach. It's time for the wedding,

Time for the score to settle. Remember how we felt

When the trumpets lifted and riffed the midnight golden?

That moment sublimity burned its mark on our foreheads

And left us for dead. There's nothing now

But to wait for the hit man to show his decorous hand.

violence marriage music

T.R. Hummer

T.R. Hummer is the author of fifteen books of poetry and essays, most recently In These States (Jacar Press, 2020) and Eon (Louisiana State University Press, 2018). His most recent poems have appeared in The New Yorker , New York Quarterly , and Rattle . A former professor, he served as editor-in-chief for the Kenyon Review , The New England Review , and The Georgia Review . He has received numerous awards and honors, including a National Endowment of the Arts Individual Artist Grant in poetry, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, and the Donald Justice Award for Poetry. Formerly a professor and editor, he now lives in Cold Spring, New York. Photo by David Limburg