1 by jamison crabtree
from WOLF!!! |
37. THE UNIVERSAL FORM & AN UNIVERSAL WOLF
|
A pigeon's skeleton is filled with air. |
You know what a lie is.
|
To conflict, a form was given;
story. Fate, which was (and is) a matter (and mattering) out of hand. Deflated, a bird's bones produce pinched sounds. Eight police officers choke a man to subdue him, to help hold him against the ground because they are suspicious that he's selling untaxed cigarettes. We made a language to make things more palatable. The man on the ground, often, dies. A murderer kills, a soldier protects, the state administers. The plot doesn't go anywhere new. A waiter and a policewoman, both, serve but in very different ways. If any of this were new we wouldn't take it for granted. The man on the ground, here, now, dies. You know what a lie is; but you know that calling someone a liar only makes them angry. Do you feel safer yet? We've gotten better at watching tragedy unfold, documenting it, sharing it with each other. It's easier to find now that it's seemingly everywhere. There's too much too keep up with. When was the last time you stood up for someone else? — Why did you bother? |
JAMISON CRABTREE is a Black Mountain Institute PhD fellow at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. His manuscript “rel[am]ent” was awarded the Word Works’ Washington Prize and will be published in the Spring of 2015. Other poems from the “WOLF!!!" sequence can be found online at The Destroyer, Hobart, LEVELER, Deluge, Smoking Glue Gun, Similar:Peaks::, and Printer’s Devil Review.
|