Duties of an English Foreign Secretary.(Brief article)(Book review)

Duties of an English Foreign Secretary Macgregor Card. Fence (UPNE, dist.), $16 (104p) ISBN 978-1-934200-29-2

The speaker of Card's debut is a man at war with the shortness of his attention span: "How long is the comedy/about me?" he asks. Yet Card is less interested in answering questions than in changing the subject. "There was a ship on fire last night," begins the opening poem. "I am ashamed and a burden to my friends." This can be frustrating, but when he allows us to follow the faint strands of logic in his language, as though following a thread through a …