by Liz Ahl
The U.S. has finally completed
its transformation into a dystopian game show
with an elaborate and contradictory
why not just call in sick why didn’t he call an Uber
like a normal person he shouldn’t have
spoken moved looked shouldn’t have been
silent shouldn’t have done the thing
that made him deserve death instead
of breakfast what was wrong with him?
he should have known better—
What cruel trick of space-time explains
the difference between this young man
and Trayvon Martin, also black and walking
unarmed alone at night? A higher level of humidity,
a different hour past midnight, a hooded sweatshirt,
two different cops in the cruiser, the casual movement
of a hand to scratch a shoulder—which of these
or the infinite other unwritten and ever-shifting
variables of late-capitalism quantum mechanics
transforms this headline to the version of the story
it so easily could have become?
Has already become? Will become?
The U.S. has finally completed
its transformation into a dystopian game show
with an elaborate and contradictory
why not just call in sick why didn’t he call an Uber
like a normal person he shouldn’t have
spoken moved looked shouldn’t have been
silent shouldn’t have done the thing
that made him deserve death instead
of breakfast what was wrong with him?
he should have known better—
What cruel trick of space-time explains
the difference between this young man
and Trayvon Martin, also black and walking
unarmed alone at night? A higher level of humidity,
a different hour past midnight, a hooded sweatshirt,
two different cops in the cruiser, the casual movement
of a hand to scratch a shoulder—which of these
or the infinite other unwritten and ever-shifting
variables of late-capitalism quantum mechanics
transforms this headline to the version of the story
it so easily could have become?
Has already become? Will become?
Liz Ahl lives in New Hampshire. Her book of poems Beating the Bounds was published in 2017 by Hobblebush Books. Previous collections include the chapbooks Home Economics and Talking About the Weather, published in 2016 and 2012 by Seven Kitchens Press. Her second chapbook Luck (Pecan Grove, 2010) received the New Hampshire Literary Awards "Reader's Choice" in Poetry Award in 2011, and her first chapbook A Thirst That's Partly Mine won the 2008 Slapering Hol Press chapbook contest. Her poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Court Green, Crab Orchard Review, Measure, Cutthroat, and other journals. She has been awarded residencies at Jentel, Playa, The Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and The Vermont Studio Center.
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