1 by jamison crabtree

Image by Lucia Love

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.