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william doreski

 
William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. His most recent collection of poetry is Waiting for the Angel (2009). He has published three critical studies, including Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors. His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in many journals, including Massachusetts Review, Notre Dame Review, The Alembic, New England Quarterly, Harvard Review, Modern Philology, Antioch Review, Natural Bridge. He also won the 2010 Aesthetic poetry prize.

William was kind enough to discuss with us his inspiration for the powerful poem below, "The Mess the Assassination Left." You can read about this here.

If you're interested in learning more about him, check out his blog.



the mess the assassination left


Developers leveled the forest
behind your cottage. Six hundred
acres of habitat gnawed away.

One unfinished house staggers
against the prevailing wind.
The naked reddish soil suggests

a surgical field, a potential
site of infection. Bankrupt,
the developers left the country

and thrive in Guatemala where
no one cares that their Spanish
sounds like ground glass and their kids

bully kids who badly outplay them
at soccer. You regard the barren
landscape with a sigh. Your husband

left a sheaf of papers proving
that J. Edgar Hoover conspired
to murder Trotsky in Mexico,

but Mercader beat him to it.
The cottage roof leaks. Pale stains
on the parlor ceiling mimic

the mess the assassination left
in Mexico City. You don’t care
whether historians understand

how devious Hoover could be,
your late husband also a stooge
of the FBI. Orchids flourish

in rococo pots. Overheated
with propane, your tiny house
braces itself against the blank

and windy space behind it—
dust ghosting in ruddy billows
in memory of a killing no one

would hesitate to replicate,
the unfinished house collapsing
in a slew of weathered sticks.





If you like "The Mess the Assassination Left," check out Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum's "Deer Ticks"

Ad Hominem Art and Literature Review. 2010.
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