Rachel Loden's "The Pure of Heart, Those Murderers"/from Dick of the Dead

Rachel Loden's new collection, Dick of the Dead (Ahsahta, 2009), vibrates with the same parodic music that so energizes her previous collections; I consider her among the pantheon of contemporary poets working the vein of parody (along with Kent Johnson, the flarf collective, conceptualism, etc.), though hers is closest to Johnson's in its acid take on our imperial politics and our complicity as citizen-poets. "The Pure of Heart, Those Murderers" is one of the more straightforward poems, a prayer of the sullied against those who believe themselves otherwise, who don't know our history, who don't know what "we've" done or had done for us.

The Pure of Heart, Those Murderers
-- by Rachel Loden

Preserve us from
the pure of heart,

those murderers,
unsullied

balletmasters of
faux-heroic

barricades, spoonfed
aesthetico-poseurs;

the spiritual
contortionists whose

precious bodily
fluids are unsafe

even in dreams;
the fiery reverends

of rentboy.com;
testacular guys

paralyzed
by female treyf;

the god-throttled
martyrs

and the chosen ones;
autogenocidal

provocateurs:
preserve us from

the pure of heart,
those murderers.