For the Governor of Oklahoma Who Won’t Save Us
A break from the snapping
of the earth, via Internet
taxidermy, via panic dismembered
into online skeleton. The politician’s
aftershock like a shutter / attention
giddy, like a jig, a rib. I open jars
with rubbing alcohol, rags. Absent
doctors, everyone on holiday
lakeside and denying suck. I am
pacing blank lots with a dog
who trembles, refuses to shit, shivers off
the RNA. A cat that hops the counters
spreading salt. It’s all I think about,
when to wash and how often
to panic. Am I breathing? Lungs
like stung lemons. Each day,
the movies become our guides,
our leaders. We cut our shirts
into squares, shelter an immune system
that only knows knots. Headset, lux PPE,
a dial tone when no one dialed. Some
reason to give up, not out. Nobody
gets out alive, says he. I dream
of raspberries in a tipped field. Unseen
impala, or hogtied, or not. A child
that was never born. We are
whatever we become now.
Source: Poetry (June 2021)