The Last Two Seconds

The eagerly awaited new poetry collection by Mary Jo Bang, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award

We were told that the cloud cover was a blanket
about to settle into the shape of the present
which, if we wanted to imagine it
as a person, would undoubtedly look startled—
as after a verbal berating
or in advance of a light pistol whipping.
The camera came and went, came and went,
like a mask…