I curl up on the floor of the closet
The door cracked just enough
To let a sliver of light
Hit the papers
I balance on one knee
The laptop on the other
I tried 10 takes
at the kitchen table
but the house is too small
and voices carry too well
and when it was silent
the cats would start fighting
This is everything and nothing
Pulling a chair up to the tree outside
To sit and stare up into its leaves
As the cars pass by
Do they wonder what the fuck I’m doing?
I tried to meditate again
First on the front steps
And then sitting on the porch floor
Covered in pollen
My mind racing
Racing
Racing
I close my eyes
And see
eyes staring back
black pupils
black irises
black sclera
so I open mine back
and stare at the paint drip on the porch floor
but a speck of dust and a leaf
and a trail of ants
converge
and it looks like
a child’s drawing of Bernie Sanders’ face
I try to stay away from the comments sections on the posts about Daunte Wright being murdered by a cop. It’s always the same old shit. Same shit that keeps the same shit coming, day after day after day after day after day.
I look at the profile pictures of people who comment. The people who say he shouldn’t have done this and should have done that and whatever other reason they think it’s perfectly reasonable that a family is without their son tonight that a son is without his father tonight and I imagine their grinning faces superimposed upon the white people in the souvenir photos of twentieth century lynchings and consider them one and the same and consider posting as much consider saying “if I see any of you justifying this shit, I am going to assume you would have been grinning in a photo of a lynch mob gathered around their latest victim” but I decide against it, because because because
because I don’t know
because
so I write it here instead, as though that’s any better
as though that makes a damn bit of difference
as though that does a damn bit of good
kfw2021
Undusted Corners 