Like a carcass-fat lazy river,

the chyron lays bare the fates

of Chiron & nem, & we call

that Tuesday. I’m saying boys

become memories & nobody

flinches. Black girl turns up

missing & business as usual.

I know the status quo, that it

hovers above us, kept aloft by

wings of wasps. O the woe in

the winds from those wings.

The wails in their wake. Odds

are you, too, know at least one

somebody snatched up by a

hungry bullet. The blood on

every other headline turns my

skin into spiders. I curl away

from TV screens like a light-

allergic peony. I keep the drapes

drawn in all my rooms. Told

the sun she ain’t welcome cuz

she always got new names to

report stolen from the night

before. She must be tired of death’s

grit on her tongue, the whines

of souls made to bury those they’ve

birthed. Ain’t no way she can’t

hear the choir of cracked hearts

chorusing hoarse hollers up to

her morning light—somebody’s

stink-stink now a song stuck

like a lump in the throat of a

love left behind. Left to wonder

if their gone-too-soon found

their way to a place softer than

this country of shrapnel, with

its clouds full of acid rain & mile

after mile of soil bloodied to ruin.

‍