Beauty is unfortunately beauty
And beauty is unfortunately everywhere,
In the marches, the parades,
The uniforms, and the way flags blow,
In the barbs of wire set out
Against mountain landscapes,
The orderly rows of stone crosses,
But worse is beauty and the sublime mixing
To show up together wearing horrors
Stitched into their skins,
Hiding under the gunfire music,
Or the impressionist clouds,
It can emerge in the delicate hands
Of concentration camp children,
Frail palms combined in black and white
To form the shape of a heart,
The mix will not come here so easily,
Out to these belts in and around the cities,
It will not settle on top of the stores
Blocked together in neon and cement,
Here everything is practical,
Efficiently wasted and exhausted,
No song comes out the car horn,
No poetry comes out the nearby speakers,
But sometimes the pair can thrive here,
And not just framed in a gallery,
They might settle down beside the corpse
Of a suicide completed after a fall
From an observation deck to a car roof,
Leaving a face at rest in a sea of twisted metal.
Ben Nardolilli currently lives in Arlington, Virginia. His work has appeared in Perigee Magazine, Red Fez, Danse Macabre, The 22 Magazine,Quail Bell Magazine, Elimae, fwriction, THEMA, Pear Noir, The MinettaReview, and Yes Poetry. He has a chapbook Common Symptoms of an Enduring Chill Explained, from Folded Word Press. He blogs at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com and is looking to publish a novel. Thanks for reading,