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Fairleigh Dickinson University

Poetry

Shakedown Machine

May 15, 2011

Alex Lemon

Do you smell that? How could it be, here,

Where everything looks perfect? That sour tang

Of a pile of one hundred degree garbage

Behind the storefront you’re standing in

Front of. Sniff the air. Look around. But hurry,

You have a whole life of Miss Pancake Face

Pageants & unicorn shows to go to. The window shine

Is all you can see—the shine makes all the puppet

Strings invisible. Everything is great, man. Everything

Is groovy. Beast Sounds! Beach Loving! Everyone knows

That this is the best island filled with the most beautiful

People. Stand tall, sneer. Karate chop evil, & then blow

Kisses. Deny any & all acts of indecency, the degeneracy

Of a hotel room filled with motor-boat-engined phalluses—

All that gravy—the pleasure cruises & sex boats.

Even a noseless victim of the Buck Naked Brigade

Would say something stinks. Right here in river city.

In cowtown. In the city of lights, of sighs, of plum

Picking & juggaloes. This buttery burg. That village

Of apple-bottomed veejays. Take a big old whiff.

Take it & wait. Maybe you’ll shrug, because maybe

It really doesn’t matter. What’s the difference

Between gulag & goulash, anyway? But perhaps

That last lungful will make you shudder, ask yourself

What’s the matter, you burning?  & maybe, just maybe,

You’ll remember that fable your mother often told you—

A world populated by fisty gimps & sex slaves & people

Who all say they do what they do because they’re doing

It for you, all those monsters that smile their hate. A land

Where no one repents. A land where no one should be

Unrepentant. A land where, each dusk you hear faint

Voices, a choir, softly in the udder-colored

Haze, harmonizing, devotedly singing, bring

Out the motherfucking whackos .

 

# # #

 

Alex Lemon is the author of Happy: A Memoir, and three poetry collections. His writing has appeared in Esquire, AGNI, Kenyon Review, BOMB, New England Review, Open City, and Best American Poetry 2008, among others. He lives in Fort Worth, TX.

“Shakedown Machine” appeared in the Emo issue of TLR (Spring 2011).

Cover of TLR's Emo Meet Hole, Spring 2011

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