Recenter Press
  • About
  • Books
    • Rest of US by Richard Hamilton
    • evening primroses by Emma Loomis-Amrhein
    • Profit | Prophet by Patrick Blagrave
    • To Hold Your Moss-Covered Heart by Schuyler Peck
    • The Good House & The Bad House by Doe Parker
    • The Road Is Long & Beautiful by Terra Oliveira
    • And Still To Sleep by Terra Oliveira
    • An Old Blue Light by Terra Oliveira
    • Processes: A Meditation by Terra Oliveira
  • Journal
    • Issue Four: Fall 2020
    • Issue Three: Spring 2020
    • Issue Two: Fall 2019
    • Issue One: Spring 2019
  • Interviews

Owners

BY MICHAEL BEGNAL.


It is what owners do
and have always done
--
they’re gonna do it,
are doing it to you

and maybe there's no way to stop it
now that they’ve seized control
of the parameters of perception,
and so the first thing to know

is that the mind
itself is a construct,
but when you turn it off
you can get underneath

yet, the valences of the material
world are real, and
when the authorities’ armed wing
summarily execute, it is
​
real people who die
--
remember their names--
when they have deported your friends,
you (all) will feel it

Michael Begnal is the author of Future Blues (Salmon Poetry, 2012) and Ancestor Worship (Salmon Poetry, 2007), as well as the chapbooks Tropospheric Clouds (Adjunct Press, 2020) and The Muddy Banks (Ghost City Press, 2016). His work has appeared in journals and anthologies such as Notre Dame Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Empty Mirror, ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, and Thinking Continental: Writing the Planet One Place at a Time (University of Nebraska Press, 2017). You can follow him on Twitter @Michael_Begnal.
  • About
  • Books
    • Rest of US by Richard Hamilton
    • evening primroses by Emma Loomis-Amrhein
    • Profit | Prophet by Patrick Blagrave
    • To Hold Your Moss-Covered Heart by Schuyler Peck
    • The Good House & The Bad House by Doe Parker
    • The Road Is Long & Beautiful by Terra Oliveira
    • And Still To Sleep by Terra Oliveira
    • An Old Blue Light by Terra Oliveira
    • Processes: A Meditation by Terra Oliveira
  • Journal
    • Issue Four: Fall 2020
    • Issue Three: Spring 2020
    • Issue Two: Fall 2019
    • Issue One: Spring 2019
  • Interviews