A woman sowing primes by the main channel
glances once again at the monument.
The troops have grown so weary of the plaza
that some thumb through literature
the gangs of children left.

Endurance runners in the unending great race
bifurcate the city charged with emblems the judge
suggested which we’ve embellished.

We’ve been on one side or the other
of windows positioned like mirrors
outside the projection of which initiates
the sensitive-infinite stock market ticker
controlling the scope of instinct,
the breadth of choice.

We’ve been on one side or the other
of insatiable verdict.

Loving, or loved by,
a prodigal effigy.

Someone says, discreetly, our dissent
is officially sanctioned. That woman,
he says, with her seeds –
she –
she borrows without interest
from arterial brightness.

She gives of the sensitive
network and ducks us all.

Now he’s been pushed to a rostrum where
everyone knows he’s covered at each instant
by phonecams from thirteen directions.

The man seems unprepared to go viral.
But in all this time, no one has clarified:
Is it rupture the gunneries signify?
Or silence?

Whatever.

The data suffocates
its connotations.

With others who must feel the same way,
I slip the x/y axis and enter
dream-shifting columns of athletes
proceeding steadily toward
a desired outcome I can’t envision
though the future
washes through me
like an acid my body produced.

 

***

Andy Stallings lives in Massachusetts with his wife, Melissa Dickey, and their children, Esme, Curran, and Galen. He teaches at Deerfield Academy. Rescue Press published his first book of poems, To the Heart of the World, in 2014.