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.

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Copyright © 2013 Sebastian Agudelo All rights reserved
from Each Chartered Street
saturnalia books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission