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Dick Cheney’s New Heart Speaks

By Melissa Tuckey

A roadside bomb is planted in every chest

I was a pea sized fist in the dirt of a man
who had half your brains
but he was good

The heart does not relinquish its domain
Your blood confesses to every crime

Don't expect me to be patient with you

Your DNA has struck a compromise 
with the purgatory of souls

Your fingerprints engraved with
names of the dead

Have a seat Mr. Cheney while
your skin
reads its final testimony
Added: Wednesday, July 9, 2014  /  Used with permission.
Melissa Tuckey
Photo by Dave R. Phillips.

Melissa Tuckey is a poet and literary activist.Tenuous Chapel, her book of poems, was selected by Charles Simic for the ABZ First Book Award in 2013. Other honors include a Black Earth Institute fellowship and a winter fellowship at Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She's received grants in support of her work from DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and Ohio Arts Council. Tuckey's poems have been anthologized in DC Poets Against the War anthology, Ecopoetry, Fire and Ink: Social Action Writing, and Truth to Power. Tuckey is a co-founder of Split This Rock where she currently serves as Eco-Justice Poetry Project Coordinator. She’s editor of Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology with University of Georgia Press. Melissa Tuckey lives in Ithaca, New York.

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