Chitra Ganesh, How to Assemble a Flying Car (detail), 2018, linocut on tan BFK Rives. Courtesy of the artist & Durham Press.
Variegations
*
God’s in His Coven—
All’s left with the world.
*
The testicles have changed places
But the shark goes on.
*
If I stepped out of my body
I would break out in hives
*
An umlaut by any other umlaut
would smell as umlaut.
Peter Klappert teaches in the MFA Program at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. His AGNI poem “Satan Who Is Most Noisy When He Whispers” is the concluding poem in his book-length collection The Idiot Princess of the Last Dynasty, which was scheduled to be published by Knopf in January 1981 “and may yet appear. ‘Oh it’s a grand bad story…’” Portions of the book appeared in AGNI 9 with an essay on the manuscript by Martha Collins, as well as in AGNI 10/11 and 12. Klappert recently completed a chapbook-length poem in the form of a film script, ’52 Pick-Up: Scenes from the Conspiracy (A Documentary). (updated 1981)