The Entertainers

A Bastardized Sestina

Sestinas are an intricate form composed by shifting the end-rhyme of each line in a fixed pattern, with a final stanza that draws together all the rhymes in a formal resolution. (For a canonical example, see my Hometown Sestina.) For this poem, I wanted to play with the traditional form to create something terser and more self-referential. This bastardized Sestina suits the content better, I think, as the theme concerns the link between state power (the Hobbesian Leviathan) and our modern system of 24-hour clock time. I hope you enjoy the ride.

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Venetian Clock-Face © 2026

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The Entertainers

I’m not inclined to conspiracies
but here’s one to entertain:
the implacable march of a clock
is Leviathan under the waves,
and cold white sand is humming
where his blood has left a stain.

When one who is so inclined
to stain white sand in blood
is marching to an implacable clock
his humming, cold and white
conspires to entertain Leviathan
in wave upon wave upon wave.

But if whitecaps stain the waves
like so many cold-case conspiracies
our blood will incline toward humming
like sand in an implacable clock.
Then marching is no entertainment
for one caught up in a Leviathan.

We once entertained in cold blood
the long white conspiracy
like a wave stranding Leviathan
on its march-stained strand.
So hummed the implacable ones
who inclined us toward the clock.

These waves upon the sand
are like the clock of my blood
one and the same conspiracy.
Leviathan remains implacable,
but my own inclination to march
keeps the entertainers humming.
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