Softcover Words

Read this “How to…” book
and communicate in softcover words
your hard cover deeds —

herding sheep and goats,
lying with packs of dogs,
theorizing  yersinia pestis theorems,
and puzzling though a sheaf
of sanity assassins.

Read about the coughing
and sneezing of the infected.
Eat stands of banana, malanga, and yuca.

And make ten thousand marks
silvery and lustrous gray —

recounting the executions carried out
by children bored of kicking
old oil drums green
and rusted brown.

“What the lawyers with the midwestern palazzo seem to think is what a lot of elite people and police seem to think: society is basically unfair, and they are willing to go to extremes to preserve that unfairness, since they’re on the winning side of it.”

— Rebecca Solnit / “Chrome-Plated Pistols and Pink Polos: The Face of Elite Panic in the USA”