Merrill Cole
Summer 2025 | Poetry
The Advocates of the Ordinary
the world as it is is the world as it is is the world as it is
is not a rose
nothing arose nothing arrives
no Doris Day wide-mouthing, “Que Sára, Sára”
Whatever
caught up in the late-capitalist hippety hop
dust bunnies burned by mascara
red-eye flights of nowhere to take off to
no fucking adventures
no adventures in fucking
no, we don’t have to enter to abandon hope
though the tragic flaw was never revealed
virtue-signaling audiences applaud themselves
bolt-fastened in revolving seats
in this space where horizon once insisted
a phallus or tombstone engraved in obsidian
No
the flutter at loss for the dove
you, standing there
put down that protest sign
it can only ever say, “oh well, the war”
beauty has passed the expiration point
please stop quoting Audre Lorde
No
these bullets don’t protect you
Stop waiting for iridescence–flowers–flight-filled wings
Witness
this blue hand seizing the ocean
the foamy release
and the body’s rainbow arc
Prism through which to illuminate all aspects of our being
Stepping into the new place and the new time
finally forgetting ourselves
outside ourselves
rosy-fingered up at dawn
Merrill Cole's poems have appeared in, or are forthcoming from, such venues as New York Quarterly, Denver Quarterly, Bellevue Literary Review, and Women's Studies Quarterly. A published translator and queer theorist, he is Professor of English at Western Illinois University (WIU). Cole also serves as the Chapter President of University Professionals of Illinois at WIU, an academic union affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers.