Fifteen Thousand Degrees Against Virtue

by Nicholas Rombes

You sink your teeth into

history and it bleeds. The disheveled

heads of the headless. The split open pink

grapefruit. Let’s Get Out of this Country

sings Camera Obscura on the wasted anlaog

radio as we motor out and out

and out. I just don’t understand, Lisa, how

 

the flap of your yellow shirtsleeve in the open-

window doesn’t mean as much as those ancient

verses about Doing Unto Others. Oh, God. These people

I hate might save me from drowning

some day. You get that

right? The fresh cut limbs and wrecked amphetamines.

 

Here is my request: take that knife there

on the butcher block and after doing

persons X Y and Z use it on me, on me, on me, on me, on me,

on me, on me, on me, on me, on me, on me, on me, on me,

on me, on me, on me, on me, on me, on me, on me, on me.

 

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About the Author:

Nicholas Rombes, author of Cinema in the Digital Age and A Cultural Dictionary of Punk: 1972-1984, is an English professor in Detroit and also a columnist at The Rumpus. Some of his work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Oxford American, The Believer, Exquisite Corpse, and other places.