NEIGHBORS DEAD LIKE DOVES
- 7 days ago
- 1 min read
By Jessie McLean
Would that it be me, not them that is insane.
My sacrifice to a world
too dear to leave to a dream.
I need to be wrong
about what I see.
Even reasonable people I know
are talking about civil war,
how neighbors will shoot neighbors
dead like doves,
painted on the steps
of their own doors,
like cattle corralled and panicked,
like leaves leaving too soon for fall.
A story is raped a number of ways.
First by a man, then by the law.
Choice quakes like tall grass
in small shuddering wind waves.
It's hard to keep pace
with everything we've lost.
Worms in the food, waste water
meets bare feet on the floor,
give us your tired, your poor.
Or just embroider the slaughter of dignity,
a religious quote to hang on your walls.
If Jesus crossed the desert,
would ICE be your first call?
Now we're saying release the files
when we should be saying release the bulls.
Pulling teeth, Washington took
his slaves' mouths for his own skull.
We've been wrong the whole time,
riding the spirits we've dulled.
Hail the rapacity of three branches, fallen.
Leaves have retracted their promise,
honest in death and crunched under foot,
leaving the living unforgivingly.
Sanity drips down
the hanging steer's hoof.
The trees are naked.
The barn shelters butchers at work.
Let me be mistaken.