This morning
I saw a shopping cart
trundling down the sidewalk by itself
weighed down with wet paper pulp
mildewed grocery bags
and greasy chicken bones.
Smelled of underpasses,
fitful sleep,
mental breakdowns on subway platforms.
Originally appeared in the print edition of Locust #8. Splash image by Laura Fair-Schulz.
I am your home it shouted at me,
a starved number,
a deflected machine,
a monologue in rust.
I tried to reply
rebuff
refute
but by then it was already hugging
a shiny new fighter jet
in the ionized air.
Just another Tuesday.
Whenever this train stops
long enough for me to think,
I can hear your condescension:
rehearsed in your head
and squeezed through pursed lips.
How sad, the refrain goes.
We would like to do something…
Words of empathy:
fashion accessories,
useful like a landmine.
I’d report them to the International
Criminal Court but I’ve had
too much coffee this morning
and can’t keep any of my houseplants alive.
The succulents are snickering under their breath.
Even cacti wither to spite me.
Now I’m standing here asking
why I can’t remember any of my own poems.
Congealed grief.
Hopes rotted and dried out,
uprooting themselves.
A cypress in a wildfire
our parents insist
is still safe to climb.
On the other side
there is a planet
of bright green fields
spinning
desperately
to get out.
Past times
we taught it to sing
the verses of Shelley and Blake,
Morris and Le Guin.
We had language
with substance
and nourishment.
Before we were coerced
how to speak our own (non-)futures.
Today we feed it –
when we remember it –
with humanitarian promises.
Charity is a bunch of empty calories,
sugar for the liberal soul.
Won’t bring my snake plant back to life.
In a more ordered hell,
the gaps in cynicism were wide enough
to drive a truck through,
smuggling arms to freedom fighters
in the Republic of Dreams.
Now the six o’clock news
is full spectrum,
following us around in our back pockets,
burning holes in our hope.
Our deepest fears
layered tightly
into memes.
Futile prayers
they stay trapped on the screen.
Here is the father
whose spine is the shape of a bus,
and the child who can only smell sulfur now.
Over here the teenager
who puffed cesium onto her cheeks.
Her best friend
who dreads his parents
having another baby
while he rummages through the scrap yard.
Next to them,
the janitor at the munitions plant,
who every night has nightmares
about the fighter jet’s embrace.
There’s an overworked metalsmith
somewhere in North Carolina.
He should be proud
of the soothsaying shopping cart
he built five years ago.
The throb of repetitive stress
makes it impossible to concentrate.
Last year
the union came in
for a spell.
Held the election too early.
Lost badly.
His work is better suited
for panic attacks
than anything smacking of pride.
Days
built from deafening strains.
So it goes.
For him.
For everyone.
Everyone but you.
But someone must, you say.
Better him than us, you imply.
Back on the bright green planet,
the long-lost republic
rediscovered:
an assembly of objects –
steam engines and fry-o-laters,
obsolete iPods,
misshapen bike wheels –
stamped and bent
into community rec centers,
schools and hospitals,
vowing to make themselves useful
for our children.
Old roads are made new,
dirt and gravel pointing us back
to the places we forgot
that still live – barely, faintly
– at the roots of our nerves.
Itching to tell us
it’s okay
you can rest now,
cry now,
mourn,
then get up and live.
It’s nine fifteen.
I’m late for work
and am considering getting a ficus.
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