after Blake

Oh, another landscape about the self, cuts the desire straight,
Forgets the sublime act before you, and the crooked crack of soon, of murder.

Take his prey away with horse, fox, plow. How low his delights. How very low and hovering.
You, with your sooner road, now, the truth is told, your sorrow, is the work of wisdom. Believe.
Really believe that each portion of this life frowns, then fruits itself into a greater spite.
And is the work of these times to right the wrong of excess? What tyrant fails in his greed?
Not ours, but let’s not be possessive. It is hell, this crumble and fall of his image. Let it fire.
This is what I hear: the weak in courage is strong in cunning. The self, a landscape of mischief.

(I’m not telling you a fairytale)

***

Leah Umansky lives in New York City and  is the author of The Barbarous Century, (Eyewear Publishing, 2018), Domestic Uncertainties (Blazevox 2012) and two chapbooks, the dystopian themed Straight Away the Emptied World  (Kattywompus Press, 2016) and the Mad Men inspired Don Dreams and I Dream (Kattywompus Press 2014). A graduate of the MFA program in poetry at Sarah Lawrence College, she is also the curator and host of The COUPLET Reading Series in New York City. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in such places as POETRY, Magma Poetry, Barrow Street, Salamander, Pleiades, and Plume,as well as the anthologies, Plume 6, Misrespresented Peoples (NYQ Books, 2018) and The Eloquent Poem (Persea Books, 2019) Some of her Game of Thrones inspired poems have been translated into Norwegian and Bengali.  More at: www.LeahUmansky.com