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Mary Jo Bang
Mary Jo Bang
Mary Jo Bang was born in 1946 in Waynesville, Missouri and grew...
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The Anxiety of Coincidence
by Mark Bibbins
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Definitely  
by Mary Jo Bang

What is desire
But the hard wire argument given
To the mind's unstoppable mouth.

Inside the braincase, it's I
Want that fills every blank. And then the hand
Reaches for the pleasure

The plastic snake offers. Someone says, Yes,
It will all be fine in some future soon.
Definitely. I've conjured a body

In the chair before me. Be yourself, I tell it.
Here memory makes you
Unchangeable: that shirt, those summer pants.

That beautiful face.
That tragic beautiful mind.
That mind's ravenous mouth

That told you, This isn't poison
At all but just what the machine needs. And then,
The mouth closes on its hunger.

The heart stops.



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From Elegy, Copyright © 2007 by Mary Jo Bang. Used by permission of Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, Minnesota. All rights reserved. www.graywolfpress.org
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