WHIMSY
the madrigal, volume iii
Off gin lane, waltzing
by george rawlins
fleas make their devotions to the primordial
copse of Tewkesbury’s powdered
periwig, buoyed by an airy faith in
the fog that blankets alabaster
headstones. Impossible figments once
ideas now congeal into flesh with
a taste for blood instead
of facts—hungry as Grub Street nibs they suckle
ink late into the work lamp dusk, without
patron or host, heartened with blue
ruin. You’d have ruled here, Tom, re
inventing us as if carving a haunch with blunt
intent, blood
browning on your spattered apron.
George Rawlins has a BA from Ohio University and an MFA from the University of California, Irvine. He has recent publications in Anthropocene, The Common, Dreich, Illuminations, New Critique, One Hand Clapping, and New World Writing. His forthcoming poetry collection Cheapside Afterlife (September 2021, Longleaf Press) reimagines in 57 sonnets the life of the 18th-century poet Thomas Chatterton.