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Dear Empire, I am confused each time I wake inside you.
                      You invent addictions.
Are you a high-end graveyard or a child?
                      I see your children dragging their brains along.
                      Why not a god who loves water and dancing
              instead of mirrors that recite your pretty features only?

You wear a different face to each atrocity.
You are un-unified and tangled.
                      Are you just gluttony?
                      Are you civilization’s slow grenade?

     I am confused each time I’m swallowed by your doors.

Copyright © 2018 by Jesús Castillo. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 29, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.