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Conspiracy TheoryConspiracy Theory

By Lynne McMahonPosted Thursday, April 9, 1998, at 3:30 AM ET


By Lynne McMahon

(posted Wednesday, April 8)

To hear the poet read "Conspiracy Theory," click here.

Some local jokester with an education

must have chopped the street sign

no one's yet repaired, Nth Circle,

it reads in full, pointing to a pointless hell,

half-circle cul-de-sac endlessly turning

around and back. Too easy

to read in the drought-blasted shrubbery

and blistered gutters neighborhood decline,

but that the city or mailmen don't seem

to mind the new address

so arrests imagination that we slow down

each time to see what new old instructions

there might be to commend to us

the narrow way. Yesterday the Popsicle truck

--I'm not making this up--jettisoned

in the middle of the street

a plastic sheet of smoking ice

in which, if you squinted, you could just make out

two rods, or legs, or haunches coming out.

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Lynne McMahon's first book is Faith, and her second is Devolution of the Nude. She is a professor at the University of Missouri at Columbia.
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