Tom Nolan quotes Philip Dacey on his poetic depiction of a poisoned Russian agent poisoned in “With or Without Milk”: “I drank a tea not made in front of me. / Beware tea brewed in ways you cannot see.”
“The poetry of violent death,” he says, “spans hundreds of years.” (via Books, Inq.)
Here’s one of my favorites, a loose sonnet by T.R. Hummer entitled “The Rural Carrier Stops to Kill a Nine-Foot Cottonmouth”:
Lord God, I saw the son of a b—h uncoil
In the road ahead of me, uncoil and squirm
For the Ditch, squirm a h–l of a long time.
Missed him with the car. When I got back to him, he was all
But gone, nothing left on the road, but the tip end
Of his tail, and that disappearing into Johnson grass.
I leaned over the ditch and saw him, balled up now, hiss
I aimed for the mouth and shot him. And shot him again.
Then I got a good strong stick and dragged him out.
He was long and evil, thick as the top of my arm.
There are things in this world a man can’t look at without
Wanting to kill. Don’t ask me why. I was calm
Enough, I thought. But I felt my spine
Squirm, suddenly. I admit it. It was mine.
Best poem on human depravity that I’ve ever read.