from The Tyrant Experiences Considerable Side Effects
Jennifer MacBain-Stephens
The Tyrant Faces Sanctions
Little throats open
I knew you’d come along
I don’t want to be cut by experience
call me pet
but I’d kill you
teach me new words
I’ll ask our mutual friends’
about my soul
all I need is to put
the most useful
weapon
into the hands of a child
Found poem. Text from: Grant, Mira. Symbiont. New York. Orbit, 2014. Print. Pages 188-207. In a symbiotic relationship: sometimes one species benefits at the other’s expense, and in other cases neither species benefits.
The Tyrant Dreams he has Two Monsters Inside his Skull
One face, stripped of power
missing his father figure
The other, shivering on a ledge.
These are two different beasts
One can endure without the other
It’s easier to control something
When you think it belongs
to you
to bleed out
That would be over too fast
Smother the rest of your day
with sound bites
go to war
to avoid the feelings inside
Slice the boys open
Found poem. Text from: Grant, Mira. Symbiont. New York. Orbit, 2014. Print. Pages 370-386. In a symbiotic relationship: sometimes one species benefits at the other’s expense, and in other cases neither species benefits.
The Tyrant Enjoys the Discovery Channel
hunts big game
push em back into the weeds
pick up a cleaver
the lions hunt gazelles
I ordered that missile
press my ear against the door
hand sliding against the wall
who is coming for me
fish tank on the floor
I separate families
I circle perimeters
these skins
naked
male or female
I don’t know
locked in this room
their last breaths:
animals
Found poem. Text from: Grant, Mira. Symbiont. New York. Orbit, 2014. Print. Pages 162-163. In a symbiotic relationship: sometimes one species benefits at the other’s expense, and in other cases neither species benefits.
Jennifer MacBain-Stephens (she/her) went to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and now lives in Iowa where she is landlocked. Her fifth, full length poetry collection, “Pool Parties” is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press in 2023. She is also the author of fifteen chapbooks. Recent work appears in The Pinch, Cleaver, Dream Pop, Slant, and Grist. She is the director of the monthly reading series Today You are Perfect, sponsored by the non-profit Iowa City Poetry. Find more of her work at jennifermacbainstephens.com.