Contributor: Peter Magliocco

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Details of daily life pale
before the pregnant facts of being
the cormorant's beak pecks blood from
soft skin of cherished desire
decadent monks pray for
at night in hedonistic crucibles.
She is the new talk show co-host
nobody really knows yet,
but she knows when to speak or listen
to rambling voiced-over facts
provided by the newspeak narrator
who holds forth from a regal office chair
only a few have ever sat in.
She dies on camera but nobody notices
because she fell asleep intermittently
preceding each commercial break anyway
when the world's destiny hung
in a precarious balance,
before Superman and Batman arrived
to save the day in each sequel to come..
Now the cormorant emerges from her belly,
having devoured blood & entrails
while staring into the shaky camera lens
as ratings plummet and censors wail
at the bird not being a turkey.


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Peter Magliocco writes from Las Vegas, Nevada, where he occasionally edits the lit-zine ART:MAG. His recent sci-fi novel is SPLANX from Cosmic Egg Books.