MEMORIAL
for the earth is filled with violence
-Gen VI. 13.
A damp season, they’ll seem like fungal spread
on posts, a blight best understood in statistic
and crime report, crawling to cover the thick
of staples left to rust from lesser posting, yard
sale, lost cat, runaway dog. Lately, mind you,
a bit more desperate, more out of work, less
high-tech, signs folks scribble offering to do
odd jobs, junk pick-ups, garden work, my favorite
rides to prison. Who needs a headline or speech
when state of the union is rigged-jobbed
to the creosote soaked poles on every corner?
Americans Must Mourn, Make-do, this one
says while the Times and Couriers elsewhere
sugarcoat what’s fit to print. Churrigueresque
gone pop, they are, the piles of plush animals
meant to grieve the seventeen year-old shot down,
on the corner Queen Lane and Green, Alvin
the Chipmunk, strapped by the neck, Sponge
Bob wire-tied above, Daffy and also the generic
fauna spawn in sweatshop elsewhere meant
for fair or dollar bins, plush teddies, lucky dogs
eglantine owls, Noah’s every beast every creeping
thing of the earth after his kind, it seems, left
to tuft and mildew after rain, blanch in the sun.