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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Martha Collins
Martha Collins
Collins is the author of a book-length poem, Blue Front (Graywolf, 2006), as well as four other books of poetry...
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lynch  
by Martha Collins

not as in pin, the kind that keeps the wheels
turning, and not the strip of land that marks
the border between two fields. unrelated
to link, as in chain, or by extension whatever
connects one part to another, and therefore
not a measure of chain, which in any
case is less than the span of a hand hold-
ing the reins, the rope, the hoe, or taking
something like justice into itself, as when
a captain turned judge and gave it his name.
that was before it lost its balance and crossed
the border, the massed body of undoers
claiming connection, relation, an intimate
right to the prized parts, to the body undone.




"lynch"
copyright 2006 by Martha Collins.
Reprinted from Blue Front
with the permission of Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, Minnesota.
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