Force-feed them cake, wake the guillotine
from its slumber of centuries, lobotomize
your landlord then remove the brain—excerebration,
exhale hegemony, tonig...
William Ward Butler is the poet laureate of Los Gatos, California. He is the author of the chapbook Life History from Ghost City Press. His recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Bennington Review, Denver Quarterly, Five Points, RHINO, Switchyard, and other journals. He is a poetry reader for TriQuarterly and co-editor-in-chief of Frozen Sea: frozensea.org