do you walk differently, unsure, unsteady
not knowing how to gauge the space between
do you stumble on the rough silences
but fear to reach out a steadying hand
family neighbors friends guests once
so memory insists, a probable illusion
I still offer greetings returned with sharp stares
And sometimes such hostility that I’m forced off the sidewalk
Not the applauded figure that everyone wants to hear.
There are enough of those,
And I do not have a good loud voice.
But the small person who lingers at the edges,
Picking up what the listeners leave behind.
The discarded flyers the illusions they wished to abandon.
The crumpled snack packages the food they found unnourishing.
The paper cups the empty dreams they hoped to fill.
Carefully I place these in the designated receptacle.
As I walk back to my room, I ponder them with a sigh and a quiet laugh.
This is a very good life.
Hands busy with chopping
Suddenly stopping, knife in midair
Hearing a soft voice murmur with laughter
Throwing the onions in a sizzing hot pan
A gnarled hand gentle on my face, and the words
Sweetness comes after tears
All these, and I’ve no family.
there with the stretcher
a cane propped beside the door
in bed
fever-glazed, coughing-seized, weakened
laughter at my slow crawl
the ambulance bumping
bewilderment over casual cruelty
slamming doors
faint words of thanks unheard
a text
a lesson
He offers this as a gift.
Black and neon green, it could be anime.
Lighter than a ceramic cup, it could be a toy.
The bullets make it real. They look like what they are.
Good intentions unmasked; detailed directions to the grave.
Black depression now armed stalks me through the back streets.
Overhead the waiting raptors kettle as they keep watch.
I want to shut my eyes, to cry.
I’m tired, wearied to my bones
By conversations where I’m thrown
Again and again
Against the concrete walls of your expectations.
I lay crumpled on the ground,
My grief purpled by darkening bruises.
The walls, once white, are bloody and stained.
Where do you look, when you turn away?
When we were children, did we know
That the sound of rain would shred our hearts?
Rain falling like tears, heavy with grief.
A grandmother disappears under the pillaging waves.
A pink dolphin dies on the shores of a lake.
A terrified mother stifles her baby’s thirsty mewls.
All we can do, we who have rain,
Is walk unprotected to bear sodden witness.
Still we turn away when we pass on the street,
Lest we see reflected in another’s eyes such awful knowledge.
How shall we go on?
Her childhood:
Her family hiding from the Russian soldiers burning their home.
Her father carrying her on the streets after Ellis Island.
NO JEWS ALLOWED.
His grandfather:
Three young brothers newly arrived and starving off a boat from Ireland.
He asked a man if he could work on the docks.
NO IRISH WANTED.
Their life:
Their parents’ flight because their marriage was a crime.
They themselves fearing to return.
NO NEGROES HERE.
Recently me:
A bus driver told me I should be deported.
My kind isn’t wanted here.
GOD HATES QUEERS.
The vessels crack and crack and shatter.
Once broken glass glittered on pavement
In the cold November night within shuttered quarters.
Now metal fragments litter the ground
In the wastelands that housed villages.
What do we do when rage and fear
Make us forget what we sought to build?
When we close our ears to the wail of grief
That sounds the same torn from any throat?
When we break under the weight of repairing the world,
Who will hold us?
Shattered vessels.
Once broken glass glittered on pavement
In the cold November night outside shops and homes.
Now metal fragments litter the ground
In the wastelands that housed villages.
What do we do when rage and fear
Make us forget what we sought to build?
When we close our ears to the wail of grief
That sounds the same from any throat?
When we break under the weight of repairing the world,
Who will hold us?
Worlds have been destroyed before.