John Coleman Bennett
Taghairm #11: Manhunt Ends without Man
It may be the only outcome
allowed us now /
Even if apprehended, the headline
might well state the same:
give us this day, our daily dread /
All eyes alert at the grocery /
All wanted signs now read need /
The braided social umbilical
erotically around our collective necks /
We wanted to have our TikTok
and eat it, too /
the lotto-promise of lost
optics arching into our feeds.
The search ended with such small spectacle /
The thermal survey found no heat patterns /
The rideshare driver resumed outsourcing
his car to a rideshare driver through
an app that got a cut
until one day there were
more manhunts than men /
more grenades lobbed
than bodies willing to jump on them.
John Coleman Bennett is a graduate of the University of Montana’s MFA program where he was a poetry editor for CutBank. He is the winner of the Greta Wrolstad Poetry Travel Award and the Boston Mayor’s Poetry Prize. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Southern Poetry Review, Ploughshares, The Journal, Columbia, Hunger Mountain, Verse Daily, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Fourteen Hills, The Evansville Review, and many others. A former Writer-in-Residence of the Inn at the Oaks, John has worked for Ploughshares and is currently an editor at Brill Publishing in Boston. For a complete list of publications and awards, please visit: www.johncolemanbennett.com.