Lance Phillips
From Falsity, or The Truth-Taking Stare (pages 2-4)
Hi, we are expressing such a
dominance the bird, struck,
remains and is crushed. Can’t
you feel it lining your right
cheek, a quiver, then we heard
financial dominance and
thought oh, that replaces all the
subjects with their monies, with
each death.
Double-hops vulture, this is our
ignore line, to shoulder with a
serviceable grace, turns
propriety of death, with wings’
sweep, functionable, sometimes
we listen in because they’ll say
stupid or funny things.
They want us to exploit the
persons they wish they weren’t,
they want to pay us to do it and
we oblige them while watching
a car bomb inefficiently
transform the marketplace or
while positioning our window
with our lilac’s saturating scent.
Lance Phillips was born in Stuttgart, Germany in 1970. He grew up in many places. He attended the University of North Carolina at Charlotte for his BA in English and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop for his MFA in poetry. He has published four books of poetry, Corpus Socius, Cur aliquid vidi, These Indicium Tales, and Mimer with Ahsahta Press, and his fifth book of poetry, Devil-Fictions, is available from BlazeVox Books. His poems have appeared in New American Writing, Volt, Fence, Colorado Review, Slope, Verse, Denver Quarterly, Bennington Review, Bombay Gin, The Tiny, The Elephants, and Fourteen Hills. His work has been anthologized in The &Now Awards 2: The Best Innovative Writing Anthology, Lenoir-Rhyne University’s tribute to Black Mountain College, Far From the Centers of Ambition anthology, and Fence Magazine’s A Best Of Fence: The First Nine Years.