Our words arrive like junk mail.
Our ears provide the bin,
crammed to the rim
with vitriol
before they rust
like tin.
In Ginsberg’s Fall of America,
the autograph came late.
His shoulders shuddered
like a barge
under its bloody weight.
John Hancock signed
his name in ink
while others signed
in blood
and drowned the tribes
both small and great
that thrived
before the flood.
Frank William Finney
Frank William Finney is an award-winning poet from Massachusetts who taught literature in Thailand for 25 years. His poems have appeared in Bitter Melon Review, The Frogmore Papers, The Penmen Review, Seventh Quarry Press, Viridine Literary, and elsewhere. His chapbook The Folding of the Wings was published in 2022.