The Propaganda Factory
or Speaking of Trees
Marc Vincenz
ISBN 978-0-923389-05-5 $10.00 60 pages
BLACK SKIES
The sun bottoms out
and they rise again,
air-tumbling whorls,
screaming four-letter words.
When our backs are turned
they go straight for the warm blood,
dying their beaks
in our carbon dioxide,
clicking their beaks
like mad scissors.
Joseph says their magic is in the feathers,
he calls them quills that ink the skies.
I say, strange they bleed cold.
But, Ah—respite,
he with the bow and arrow,
he with the eyes
in the back of his head,
he with the illusion of time.
Marc Vincenz is Swiss-British and was born in Hong Kong. His most recent books include The Propaganda Factory, or Speaking of Trees (Argotist, 2011) and Pull of the Gravitons (Right Hand Pointing, 2012). His translation of Swiss poet Erika Burkart's collection, Secret Letter, is forthcoming from Cervena Barva Press (2013). He currently lives in Iceland where he works as a journalist, poet, translator, editor and book designer. Recent and forthcoming publications include Guernica, Exquisite Corpse, The Potomac, Spillway Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, elimae, MiPOesias and Stirring. He is presently working on a verse novel, Leaving Wolf Mountain, and translating the works of Werner Lutz, Ernst Halter and Jon Kalmann Stefansson. Marc is Editor-in-Chief of MadHat Press and Mad Hatters' Review. In 2011, he was nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize.