locate the closest overlooked neighborhood —
at its core extract all humans living underneath
life’s bootheel. replace with millennials cradling
postcolonial guilt, but not. ignore the woman’s
cardboard [help] sign tattered, stained & broken
like her: imagine being long-ago unseen, erased
in between the throng, an existing non-entity. ask,
too, if gun be an instrument what refrain whizzed
soundless amid crestfallen shadows lingering
a decade. go from “a to z” to list the dead — too many
to name, but try: antoine, byrd, carlos, delante ...
no deader now than then. still a memory real,
cold steel, shots fired — death, what did we know
of dying? don’t forget love, a love strangling addicts
caught in a docetic whirlwind with no blue sail.
before the corner becomes distorted remember:
one more time inhale deep. inhale memory to include
the bad & terrible beauty just beneath the living.
2017
Regular
Contemporary
2023
Poems of Place
Politics
Caesura
a break between words within a metrical foot
Imagery
visually descriptive or figurative language, especially in a literary work
Imperative
an instruction or a command
Rhetorical Question
a question asked for effect, not necessarily to be answered