Mark Young

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Three geographies

Kronstadt

                         Were carried out in
                               full-dress regalia
                     across the frozen
                            sea. Some horses
                                  had a hard time
                  coping, would rather
                                     be out plowing 
                      the fields, raising
                             a lather. & popcorn.

Kathmandu

                              The ground is
                 semi-transparent but
                       the rows of linden
                            that line the avenue
               leading up to the
                     palace are opaque
                                  & delicately traced in
                         red to prevent them
                               from ever getting lost.

Duluth

                      Blame the oil
                                      companies! Toy
                           dogs made from
                    synthetic chicken
                                      feathers are
                                lyrically un-

                        ambitious &
                               need a heavy
                         dose of organic
                      fertilizer before
                                they sing like
                             tigers in the sun. 





Back Home in Roswell

The depth of Pancho
Villa's knowledge of 
band music bordered
on the sublime, his
exegesis of this difficult 
subject illuminating. More 
amazing was his ability
to create a mytho-poetical 
totality from the spicy, 
comforting, semi-solid 
combination of bean curd 
& ground pork known 
elsewhere as ma po tofu. 
Fuzzy as macro-regions 
may be, it is impossible to 
discuss globalization or 
its history without them.

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Mark Young has been publishing poetry for nearly fifty-five years. His work has been widely anthologized, & his essays & poetry translated into a number of languages. He is the author of more than twenty books, primarily poetry but also including speculative fiction & art history. His latest books are The Codicils from Otoliths, & an e-book, Asemic Colon, from The Red Ceilings Press.