National Nook
From that nook, you can watch the pageantry
Under the covers, hunkered in pitch dark
A Nebraska of your highest ideals
A Boston of your basest impulses
You can see it all,without much fussing
Creep among the cattails of Delaware
Strut by that obelisk in Washington
Work that sucker (high five your selfie mates).
In there, you can gobble up the West Wing
In suit & tie, spitting out the wishbones
Onto the Potomac, as the sun sets
A San Jose of your screen addiction
A Nevada of your secret defense
You can have it all, with a bit of—oomph.
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
These Lands
Ok, so, Monday morning, God is Dead
Like ancestors, and dine-in Pizza Huts
Flashy things to say, what’s drab—is Tuesday
Backflowing into Monday, while Wednesday
Portends even weightier mysteries
Like, Taco Bell weekly menu updates
But Monday is Monday’s stated purpose
Glaringly murky, like Tuesday’s, Wednesday’s
An abyss of no meaning at midweek
Amidst the stark absence of mass violence
Thank god, wormification, and these lands
For tomatoes ripening by Thursday
For the return of that one-legged crow
On Friday, pecking the past week to bits.
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Wise Poet
She had become a church of digressions
Just at the time when “digressions” went out
Along with high rise jeans and the tarot.
In other words, she had become young-old
Like the United States, and the vape craze
And everything Obama, and brunches
Amazingly, brunches sputtered out too.
And the occasional Back To Nature
A quick rub out along a briar patch
Didn’t purify the mind anymore.
So she decided to let Empire speak
Openly, through her, in three distinct modes:
As against, againstish, and part of it.
Better put, she stopped casting spells herself.
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
RODRIGO TOSCANO is a poet based in New Orleans. He is the author of twelve books of poetry. His latest books are WHITMAN. CANNONBALL. PUEBLA. (Omnidawn, 2025, National Poetry Series finalist), The Cut Point (Counterpath, 2023), The Charm & The Dread (Fence, 2022). Forthcoming is Salvage Nation: 100 Sonnets (Winter Editions, fall 2026). His Collapsible Poetics Theater was a 2008 National Poetry Series selection. His poetry has appeared in over 25 anthologies, including, Best American Experimental Poetry. Toscano received a New York State Fellowship in Poetry. He won the Edwin Markham 2019 prize for poetry. He works for the Labor Institute in conjunction with the United Steelworkers on educational projects that involve environmental and labor justice culture transformation.