Sodom, Sodom
look back, look back
you will be Rorschach
a print of a man

so slit the blinds gently go ahead be my guest
and nudge the veins open to peek at your worth
the truck across the driveway, a barricade
its motor left running, pinned, wouldn’t you say

while scorchers with torches stampede through town
winds from the shipyards fan the brimstone
poisons break against the seawall at the end of your blood
the flood plains swallow the runoff of the wicked

who gasp incantations, a sea dead of sorcerers
knocked out by the whitecaps, skinned clean on the rocks,
and hardened to the landscape of a chokehold frontier
with tight leather gloves left behind dropped carefully. 

Ken Been is a former speechwriter and copywriter. His poetry and prose are often set in Detroit, where he currently writes.  He has placed poems in Passages North, Midstream and Chunga Review. More recently, his short story, “Iodine,” is forthcoming in Hospital Drive (University of Virginia).