--nd
--fterward
We always thought showing them would be enough
Painstakingly transcribed the mail-in news
chanted sotto voce lines of poetry and soliloquies
that spread like clouds over the sky
obscuring the stars phantasms with grave faces
We silently wrote these puddles of blood
recited tank routes
rehearsed the dance numbers to be performed in the square
even arrayed a wedding of the dead
Wormwood’s memory is bitter, the rose’s offering so fragile
We always thought showing them would be enough
An eyeball rolls over the baked earth
alone, meaningless, empty memory.
“The seasons shift so strangely, people’s gazes are no longer wet.
Refracted hesitation
stabs the self, and others.”
O innocent, helpless
dust cannot alter
topography. Could it be sandstorms,
that permanent desert feature,
have enveloped this stifled city
It is too easy to lose focus
Ideology is another word for hurricane
Witness becomes a wound hanging in air
Expression the raft of deceit
Steal from my side the heat
of others’ candlelight
Smash the hand-blown glass bottle
in my hand
The cards of accusation
seal a tiny living room
cut-and-paste enemies into our group
Comrades float like fog
Every year we ready paper and our statement
its transcribers slip in droves into a pit
beneath the screaming of demonic flutes
Sharpened pencils are pointed and pointless
One skewers the solitary eyeball and holds it high
calling it a discount fishball from the vendor’s cart
Lose language again in language’s sandy current
get hacked to pieces by a brand-new silence
The copse of youth is growing fervently
this is not something we can penetrate
or avoid
anymore
Fingernails
Sleeping outside is a reality
The tents were likewise broken
Their sweat runs down our bodies
Just as young, as poor, as filthy
Negated people are all alike
Blood streams onto the ground
Maybe the song changed language
Maybe the instruments look different
Maybe we should have gone home sooner
Maybe the statutes they raised are even bigger
The books they read the survivors don’t dare open
The country they loved found repugnant strength in amnesia
The souls they left here have been depreciated
The bullets we imagine perforated their chests twenty-six years ago
We prefer to call ourselves newborns
We have white teeth and a narrow but fiery love
The pavement we lay on is just as nobbled and hard
Smoke from their cigarettes shades our confused eyes
The tanks that ground them roll into our neighborhoods
The TV that broadcasted them cooks us fresh lies for every meal
Our bodies blossom with gold Araguaney flowers like their
achievements
The police they pleaded with crack our skulls
They say they know how songs die
know how reason has been ridiculed
They know the skill to sit in silence is a self-restrained language
know the hate of the defeated and the hypocrisy of fire
We say we won’t light any more candles
We say our imagined love might be destroyed by imagination
Our black disappointment pauses like a lost sheep
They say don’t believe the dictionary’s definition of “depart”
They say they like our parks, with those real trees
They mention a flighty sort of animal called “conviction.”
They touch our tattered umbrellas with silver fingernails
Subject Questions
1
We obstruct
Obstruct us
We cannot obstruct
There’s no way to obstruct us
We antagonize
Antagonize us
We cannot antagonize
There’s no way to antagonize us
We attack
Attack us
We cannot attack
There’s no way to attack us
We change
Change us
We cannot change
There’s no way to change us
2
We listen
Listen to us
We cannot listen
There’s no way to listen to us
We gather
Gather us
We cannot gather
There’s no way to gather us
We
We kiss
Kiss us
We cannot kiss
There’s no way to kiss us
3
We approach
Approach us
We cannot approach
Approach we cannot build
We have faith
Have faith in us
We cannot have faith
Faith we cannot carry
We weep
Weep us
We cannot weep
Weep we cannot complete
We eat
Eat us
We cannot eat
Eat we cannot escape
