Amelia Martens
- How We Are
- Jun 10, 2020
- 1 min read
The End of May 2020
The magnolia blooms light
bulbs and white women
clench their jaws
and call the police
in all American cities.
We are dying
of rust; the slow
erosion, scales
form armor
that eats the interior.
Our daughter tells
a joke: What stopped
baseball season
this faulty spring?
Bats. Bats. Bats.
I am in the ceiling
again, that float-
away feeling.
He said he could
not breathe.
Light bulbs broken
off in the storm
lay like eggs
across the deep
strangled grass.
We can’t say
which part of
the arc we’re in;
no third act
begins this way.
Healthy at Home
isn’t true
for everyone
asleep in bed
after midnight.
I leave the house
and I bubble;
no masks in sight.
Naked faces broken
in this broken light.
Indeed: "We can't say / which part of / the arc we're in." Rust-eaten, grass-strangled, and clenched--oh, I can feel this poem--and that last line as bare as those broken bulbs. Thank you, Amelia.
Dear Amelia,
This is why poetry can do so much. You slip between stanzas the hard blades until the lines that "healthy at home/isn't true/for everyone." Poetry might not save us but maybe we can propel ourselves into some right action from the energy of the linebreak.