Hawks on Wires by Dave Smith

Author:Dave Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: LSU Press
Published: 2011-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

Jury Duty

Room-door squints open, like eye of a needle, then faces,

tables numbered, nails pecking laptops neoned,

games, ear-cords, boogaloo, Mozart, maybe

jazz. We all wait to be chosen, news no one wants.

A child cries down the hall, hard, then softer, then deep sobs.

Pages turn for those already given up to histories, tales,

sex, murder, the gods, mysteries one man

taps his foot to reading young Keats in Baltimore.

The fatherly hum of a Coke machine lulls the windowless

room like a nursery, yawns of innocence breaking out.

In the principal’s office, accused, I tried

faint answers, getting stiff, wordless with my fear.

We will see the offender tremble. Together we will hide

in the fields of our imagination, holding still,

like any creature denying himself, head down

in long quiet confined, in halls and numbered rooms.

Tense, not speaking, we listen. Here and there one rises up

and goes. We count, jaws clenched, those with us.

Sundays our childhood streets were the same.

If a moving figure—what’s he up to?—we chose sides.

It grew dark, we ate, we read from animal books, fell asleep

loving the brave ones. That’s when we were deceived.

Tomorrow one of us would be grown, hooves

galloping off. Some, dreaming, alone, sank inside.

Now in a corner the little plea of coins, the heavy thump,

feet scraping, muffled words like truth and beauty

the same, never enough. They slip from the side

of the mouth, of the tongue with its precious wisdom.

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