april 7

 

A shadow slips in and out of the pavement cracks.

A shivery lick of flame leaps over the sandbags

and runs laughing toward the dry underbrush.

The wind picks up. The trees cry for help

but I’m busy looking at my phone, 

watching stand-up comics jump 

back and forth over a hole in the ground. 

Seven men and one woman 

in white hard hats and yellow vests 

march single file 

along a maze of salt. Quicklime. Hoarfrost. Chalk. 

Two lovers lag behind. They unstrap 

each another’s equipment

And tug each other down

 into the shaggy arms of the ditch

that cuts through the patches of ragweed. 

A cloud of pollen and glitter rises up. 

They serenade one another in static.

The search light scrapes the sky all afternoon.

The sentries switch it off after dusk. 

The lovers stand up, brushing the grasshoppers

and drone propellers from their khakis. 

Signal Blossoms

Transmitters trapped in glaciers. Fires paralyzed. 

Pull the laces tight. What’s that burst of light?

A spiral flare, a firefly cupped in your palm?

Squeeze your fist. The comedians cackle.

One of them suddenly gets a nosebleed 

but keeps on laughing. 

Sweat, rain, gall, vitriol

Giant sheets of glass flatten the grasses.

Clear as a pond, empty as a net,

all the world’s reflections 

get snatched by children desperate 

to see something, anything other 

than what we have already shown them.

April 6

 

I Never Asked For This

He is sand now, he is crumbs

and not even dumped into

the river like he wanted. 

Not much grayer than

he was when he still lived.

A cardboard box with a soggy bottom

The thunk of plastic wheels

bumping over the curb.

About what he expected.

but not what he deserved. 

Disrespectful? Rotten.

Presumed and not consulted.

Consumd and then insulted.

I am mindless. I am numb.

I am out of ink and dumb.

I look around, gather the last

of what he left behind.

Assemble the scraps and bind them

into…what? Aw, crap. 

Another fucking book.

Wrecking Ball

I am sleeping like a ship

Full of bones and bullets

Buried in the sand

Where there used to be an ocean 

I am sleeping like an aggie,

like a cat’s-eye or an alley,

rolled into a crack between the floorboards 

of the house that I grew up in

listening, then as now,

for the first resounding note

of the symphony of the wrecking ball

I am sleeping like the rubble 

of the house that I grew up in

I am sleeping like a floorboard,

creaking as I snore. Most of all,

I am sleeping the satisfied sleep

of the wrecking ball

I am sleeping like a slap 

Like a bar of soap squirted 

From your fist

I am sleeping like a butter knife

In the bottom of the drawer,

 beneath a blanket of spoons,

dreaming of its marriage

to the whetstone 

Crowd Control

 The justice center remains boarded up

Five years after the protests. 

People still ask me 

if the city is as dangerous as what they hear.

They seem skeptical when I tell them no,

Private security companies are thriving.

Their employees are like cops 

without the unions to protect them. 

If they fuck up, they’re easily replaced.

A guy in cut off shorts gets on the bus.

Butterfly tattoos on his thighs. 

He should be thrown in jail

A woman torn in half

By her own cleavage 

My wrists should be bound

With zip ties

A million microscopic whirlpools

Hungry to suck you under

A million spiral staircases

To tumble down

The blinking lights, the barricades,

the tear gas.

Real power means never being 

Held accountable 

Real love means smiling

Through the endless waves of hate

The cops may be having difficulty

filling their vacancies,

but there are still plenty of people

eager to commit acts of violence

in order to preserve their fantasy of order.

The front of the car crunched 

the side of the bus scraped raw

I’m just calling to see if you’re safe

No need to speak. Just nod

Or shake your head 

And I’ll know somehow

Gas Leak

Empty cans of paint loaded into the trunk of a rental car. 

The desire to return to an imagined state of purity. Was there ever one? 

They evacuated the building while the fire department tried to find the source of the leak. They gave the all clear then immediately rescinded it. I stood out in the sun, watching people walk by. A man carrying an assembled tent on his back walked past, never once setting it down.

When they say purity, they mean whiteness. They want everyone to be white. As if that was inherently a good thing. 

He complains that the only car they had available to rent was a Prius and that when he got in his head touched the roof. “I had to drive all scrunched over,” he said, then gave me a fist bump, which was his way of saying both hello and goodbye. Like aloha. 

And the government was busy kidnapping brown people and putting them in jail in El Salvador and everyone just kind of accepted it, even if they didn’t think it was okay. What could they do?

And I forgot my password. And the cat refused to sit in my lap, even though she usually likes to.

Of course many people vote against their best interests.

And I tried not to stare but I sneaked a peek when I thougth she wasn’t looking but she caught me and I felt terrible. But I knew I would probably do it again. 

I’m white and to be honest I don’t think it’s anything special. Though a little part of me, a little lump in my scrotum, is relieved because it makes me less likely to be spirited away to rot in a jail in El Salvador. 

Belief in the existence of purity is a kind of madness. 

They never found out what caused the gas leak.

And I went out to happy hour and ordered the cheapest thing on the menu and felt terrible. And it wasn’t even worth it.

What Happens to Shadows During an Eclipse

 The wall of light could not hold back

The rushing torrent of water. 

It could not stop the stampede or the fire 

or the tanks. We were so proud of it, we spent 

So much time building it. And it proved to be

totally ineffectual against all the things

that could destroy us. But oh it was pretty. 

I guess we thought its shimmering surface 

would mesmerize the forces of chaos 

the way it mesmerized us. 

But they barreled right through

without stopping to admire the swirling colors

and glowing layers we had worked so hard

to cultivate and collect. In retrospect,

we should have used stone. We should have 

dug a moat. We should have erected

an electrified fence, thirty feet high 

and topped with razor wire. 

But we worried that would make us 

too much like them. We thought 

we would preserve our integrity

if we chose to protect ourselves

only with the most ethereal of defenses. 

And so we were enslaved, and so we suffered,

And so we died. Without glory, without dignity,

and even though -or because?- we were right.