Rollercoaster
“Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.” – Henry James
Dear King,
You’re made of glass
Glass toes
Glass hands
Glass elbows, glass neck
your nose is a lake
You play with the duck
in the blue lung of bathwater’s
wet molecule
You follow my instructions
call me teacher
and something
quietly erupts within me
fades away into dark chocolate
You wail, Vertigo!
and reach for the Starship Enterprise
of my mother
Tourist, your shoebox
of toys turns into hours of silence
A white bunny
on a shelf
You read the ingredients on the back
of the petroleum jelly label
You wipe a sea
of brown sticky fingers
on my dress
in the runny apricot
jam tin a cloud nestled in subtle orange light
The wood is salt,
a map, a fire extinguisher
Inside your brown eyes, exists a ballroom
your tears, salt, light
I want you to remember
that you summoned the ancestors
with the wave
of your little hand, that is all it took
for democracy
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Livestock
(i.m. for the Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson)
“Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.” – Mary Oliver
That summer we were herded
into the sea
The cows fell off the
cliff into nothingness
They didn’t suffer, the black
rocks say. The
carcass turns into rot, and
then a vulture
The lettuce
is as cold as the sea
I prepare a
tuna fish salad for lunch
It tastes
like bullets, shells found on a beach
It smells like
invasion, war, genocide
Kevin Carter’s image becomes
a shield, a beacon
and then a civil rights movement
leader
Everything is calm
Yes, for now, everything is calm
We are all feeling very relaxed,
thank you for asking
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Poetry (c) Abigail George
Image: Bernd Dittrich Unsplash modified