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Hell
- Article from:
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Indiana Review
- Article date:
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July 1, 2008
- Author:
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Copyright informationCopyright Indiana Review Summer 2008. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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after Hieronymous Bosch
The damned might as well burrow in the earth,
let salt spill into wounds that reblossom, red thrumming
in the bone. Sun bends the salt sky, tumbles to shut down
each body for another hundred thousand years,
dark of milk drowning the eyes, dark eating away
the ghost. When each lantern of the mouth is snuffed,
when each mind is siphoned by the century-long dusk,
a new man, freshly fallen, refuses to believe
he's not imagining screams in the light-starved
hills, air leaking with insects. Westward, the sky slides down
the blackness of a grackle's throat, under birds that claw
and snap at his scalp, their eyes grown perfect
in the dark. Slowly blinded, he stumbles over ...