Insistent

Content warning: This poem contains graphic sexual imagery.

Savage Inequity

For AV.

Watch the faint haze of morning fog at daybreak
acquiesce to the self-same silence
of sewage dripping from the drain, such superfluous sound
as Mama Earth caterwauls from her grave
unheard. Let no curmudgeon juxtapose
a ripe red rose with the rosy cheeks
of a child in heat, or the metaphor of lovemaking
with fever. Let no mayor gentrify
the streets of East St. Louis, or D.C., or Raleigh
because history is no palindrome and the wealth they build tomorrow
will not serve the starving today. Let no man testify
how indubitably he must shut down the schools
to stop the drug sales in the schoolyard
or checking birth certificate at bathroom stalls
until he has breathed the perfume of perfunctory pollution
and placed leaded water upon his parched tongue
marches to the end of the bus line begging
while his pleas meet the only answer he has ever given
when the poor and the weak stumble at his knees.

Defining Lines

Two points define a line
like lines define movies
“You had me at hello”
or maybe, baby
nobody puts you in a corner
and a corner, perfectly shaped
is sharper than words
and words, perfectly forged
are sharper than swords
and you stabbed me, baby
with a pen to the aorta
and thick, black ink poured out
formed a puddle in my hands
and two hands define a body
define a man, because actions
speak louder than words
and words spin with angles
and angles make corners
and two corners, perfectly shaped
form a line, and one line
is all you remember.