00:02
A wall of cops moves like a wall of water on a barge, no beauty.
00:09
A wall of iron swallows the woman who falls to the ground and keeps falling.
00:14
There’s a video.
00:16
The picture stays intact, again.
00:19
It’s not pretty, meaning it’s hard to watch.
00:24
When a poet says we have to keep our eyes open,
00:28
I know who he’s talking to, I don’t listen,
00:31
or I listen enough to hate him.
00:34
If I say the woman dragged by her hair, if I compare it,
00:40
I “witness,” meaning stood by the window,
00:44
meaning shudder, let hand fall gently over lips,
00:47
pulled coat tight, tighter.
00:50
A wall of cops bucks like a frightened boar.
00:53
If I describe it, will it speak?
00:56
If I say it came furtive and dressed in red,
00:59
the cops think cop thoughts.
01:02
The cops move.
01:05
They walk like a walk, like an economy,
01:08
which after all is a fairy bucking with hunger.
01:12
Not pretty, not picture.
01:15
I follow the border patrol agent through the airport,
01:18
thinking fast thoughts, blood fast, bloodhound steps.
01:21
He buys a burrito.
01:23
If I say he stood alive in line, and my friends are afraid
01:27
to leave their bathrooms.
01:29
My friends who I love and love and…
01:31
my friends who eat from plates,
01:33
who plug cords into machines for singing.
01:36
If I say a wall of men standing on my friends’ necks,
01:40
if I describe it, my friends, who slice plums illegally on soccer fields,
01:45
whose knees move like knees into the grass if I name the grass,
01:50
if I call sweet liquor and smoke,
01:52
if I say cloy, if the child shrieks as she’s swung,
01:55
if the sun, if August,
01:57
if blue juice, will it talk?
02:00
The cops are thinking cop thoughts.
02:02
They move with a wall inside them,
02:05
answering machines, answering.
02:08
The window rattles, and I fall to my real knees.
02:11
If I hoist my friends up so they can be seen by whom?
02:15
If say they are beautiful, if I compare,
02:17
if the sun touches the glass, and I feel it.
02:21
I try to hear the border patrol agent order his food.
02:24
I listen long enough, then walk to my gate.
02:28
I feel ashamed and put it in my sleeve and later I make it a picture,
02:34
like everything.
02:35
The wall moves like a fairy,
02:38
like a woman through an airport, like a wall.
02:43
If I say I watched the woman brought down by her hair
02:46
and watched the woman cry and cried.
02:49
If the storm skips my door again,
02:51
if I leave to kill another goat,
02:53
if I promise my crop,
02:55
if I paint the wall up and down in sacred W’s,
02:58
if I make it any color,
03:00
will someone put it in her mouth?
03:02
If I close my eyes, imagine it,
03:04
if I imagine it,
03:05
if I think of something to say, the cop speaks,
03:09
and I call a plum into his mouth.
03:11
It doesn’t shut him up.
03:12
The cop kneels in the grass below my friends.
03:15
My friends crowned with August and salt, my marigold,
03:20
my wave.
03:21
They laugh like a branch laughs.
03:23
They make machines for singing.
03:25
If I say a palm in the small of the back,
03:28
if I say sun-warmed glass,
03:31
if I say sun glass breaking open the gate.
03:37
(applause)
—
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