Saturday, February 3, 2018

2 February 2018


I want to write an honest sentence about my throbbing thumbs. Opponents to be glad-handed and condescended to, like the American people on a good day. There's video of his bald head beneath an enormous comb-over, carrot top in an over-coat, power dreaming. Re-figure him as a boy with freckles and trauma a mile deep cut into his body as hyper-inflation, if not attention. My neighbor says she's turned off the news because there's nothing she can do. The only doing is not doing, is lying in a bean bag chair remembering a murder out of sequence, the moment of coming out of the water and saying yes, I saw urchins and fish. The memo betrays itself, acknowledges the story started with a Greek and not the report of a pee-stained mattress. You're flying across the Riviera in a two seater jet plane, circa 1957, with the prince you've seduced to get at your womanizing husband. Your name is Brigitte Bardot, and you're still alive, Wikipedia nearly sunken beneath your lovers' names. When you tell the truth, you're told it's fake news. When you rehearse your cover story, it's welcomed as fact. As FIN sits at the screen's center, neither story seems quite right to him, but you put your finger to your mouth for us. We won't tell, especially not now, when our reality B-movie clutters with nuclear alerts and white supremacists in the streets of Lawrence, Kansas. At least they're marching during a basketball game. What idiots. They've come fully armed and on foot to support the cause of their flag (not the one they'll wave, mind you). The speech gestured toward unity of a kind found when everyone agrees, whether they want to or not. Take all the words and turn them inside-out like socks until the lint makes you sneeze. Breathe in the thought of beautiful clean coal and exhale the buck twenty-five a week that will earn you a Costco membership. We thank you, good lords, for our crumbs. Forgive us our trespasses, those that come later on. For thine is the kingdom but ours a strip mine in Appalachia. There's anger in our beautiful dust.

--2 February 2018


No comments: