After the Election News, Human Subjects
       

This morning, after the election news,
Human subjects were solicited with
Promises of fair pay, free room and board
Pending a required, on-site physical,
Sufficient prompt to send me to research.

Near Miami, I learned, are colonies
Of human subjects, people who take drugs
Without reading one line of disclaimer.
In Indianapolis, the homeless
And the drunk are recidivist subjects.

Overnight, swastikas had blossomed like
Post-rain, desert flowers. Fucking Jew had
Been photographed on local headstones.
In workshop, the four Jewish students sat
Side by side—"Solidarity," one said,
And the class laughed like they'd always realized
The country was a room reserved in hell.

An hour later, at the flea market
In a long-closed drive-in where speaker poles
Were the stripped teeth of huge, forgotten gears.
Water-damaged Bibles were being sold,
Forty percent off list. One Old Testament
Was stained through Esther; another
Was sound after the prophecies of Ezekiel.

Because speakers have value, the vendor
Explained. Because they're stolen for wiring
To televisions, and yes, he confessed,
Original list prices were unknown.

I started to think about promises
Sputtering like the generator that
Fueled his flimsy heat, how unimportance
Can lead some to ingest untested drugs,
The world's laboratory using our hearts
Again and again to see which of them
Turn anxious, or worse, to indifference.

What I wanted was erasure, an end
To pleasantries. At last, empty-handed,
I sped to the advertised location
For temporary work, a closed motel
Whose lot was near capacity with cars.
No vacancy, erased, was etched on air,
And I examined the makes and models
For disappointments that drove their owners
To waive their rights for risk's small salary.
I walked among those cars as if I had
A reason besides being a voyeur
For loss, risking only the side effects
Of the inexpressible empathy
That crowded into my car, chattering
Like a strange, unintended passenger.

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Copyright © 2021 Gary Fincke All rights reserved
from The Mussolini Diaries
Serving House Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission