Sean F. Munro is a poet and professor of English at Delgado Community College in New Orleans. He is associate editor at Lavender Ink / Diálogos Press, Executive Director of the New Orleans Poetry Festival, and founder of LitWire, the literary events calendar of New Orleans. His poetry, criticism, and translation have appeared in Texas Review, Jacket2, Annulet, mercury firs, peel lit, Indiana Review, Split Lip, Big Other, and Brooklyn Review. More at seanfmunro.com.
Stage One: Managed Non-Event
The governor slips on his tactical polo shirt as a hurricane makes landfall.
Stars and stripes are the traditional signal for disaster.
Lappers, aka the Louisiana plate recognition system, reads all plates.
Total information awareness; zero public action.
Sometimes I wake up lying in warm data.
You can tell farmland by the lack of trees.
No ground beneath you isn't claimed by a nation-state.
Silence is a strategic communication pause.
A short pencil beats a long memory any day.
Being poor is the fourth most reliable way to die.
Are you not a highway?
Dream job: adult diaper model.
Stage Two: Monetized Grievance
Can outrage merchants end world anger?
Rainbow capitalism in the brainrot economy is the new muzak.
Disgust has excellent monetization metrics.
Nightmare job: crisis stylist for Southern politicians.
What's your new year's revolution?
Plot it on a graph and wrap it ‘round a pipe bomb.
New Orleans is always available as a metaphor for your thing.
Donors get policies; voters get apologies; politicians get what?
Johnny Applebee's plants franchises across America.
For Hollywood, any story that could help you is a bad investment.
Hang a crow from its feet to deter other crows.
Think globally, shoot locally.
“Fuck you,” says the job creator.
Stage Three: Structured Concession Theater
Good politicians borrow; great politicians steal.
The Brooks Brothers riot: softest coup in American history, and it worked.
Revolution redistributes poverty. Yikes!
Legislation redistributes wealth. Yikes!
“Capitalism works!” is bottom wing politics.
The total transparency of financial transactions from corporations and non profits bores me.
When does empathy become colonization?
Stage Four: Financialized Exhaustion
Middle class precariat: the value of your labor must be more than the wage you are paid for it.
As a community college English professor, I believe in trickle down mediocrity.
Tax resistance is just people who forget they live in a country.
To sway them, we'll need a wet tarp and a whole armadillo heart.
I’d like to point out that I am not a collar of color.
What's wrong with people? It's the cars, mostly.
Neurons glitter like stars above a payday loan outlet.
Poetry is the fourth leading cause of boredom in America.
It should be nice to make some money, but I feel like a gutter sprout.
Stage Five: Normalized Extraction
The new American dream is to leave the United States.
You are not in Ethiopia or Eritrea, and you never will be.
Genocidaires, please consult your child commodification table.
Who signed me up for transcendental lifeboat exercises that decouple my gonads?
If Baraka were alive today, he’d probably title that poem: “Somebody Buttfucked America.”
This formal expression became formal at the hands of social rhythm.
Do you have a smooth pop playlist for Thursday’s micro-apocalypse?
Are all politicians bastards? APAB.
Can I dance with the means of production?
A Smithsonian clam collector rifles in a drawer full of crackers.
Tragedy of the commons? I prefer a comedy: same ending, better timing.
Your momma’s so fat, she died of heart disease is not a funny joke.
This artisanal dumbbell has knurled ivory inlays in the grip.
Anyone can stop what's coming.
Volume 16.2, Summer 26
Sean F. Munro
