You can all see plainly that the wooden wings are a symbol for the inability to move. This is obvious, so try to do better. Here’s the twist: the wings are yours, which means you are no longer the audience. Poor child, you wanted so badly to remain on the sidelines. But you opened the newspaper. Flipped the channel. Congratulations. You won the prize. Every story is yours, now, too — personalized with each retelling: red sock turned blue, harmless erasure of mustache, not a lantern but fire torched on a stick, machete instead of a gun, a boy, pummelled into sky by a blast, now a crow, or an angel. Redacted. Reducted. What is your fear? Which part disgusts? Your story: who is reading? (Hint: the title is History.) The sooner you learn to tell untruth, the better chance of surviving which means at least a little bit of violence, which means you are a horror story, too which means you must be careful because sometimes you are beautiful & I admit, that is confusing. Look down at your hands, what are they holding? You: writing this poem. You: accomplice. You: perpetrator. To what? — To the demonization of fish hunted by the shark’s hunger, how the wings became wooden in the first place. Even the dead boy. The metaphors can’t save you. We’ve long passed go. You weren’t paying attention. It is not possible any longer to scrub the enemy’s face off your own, not possible to hand this mess back to its creator. You are the creator. & aren’t you allowed your interpretations? To decide the ways things are? Is it always a holy concept that we are irreparably interconnected? You can’t control what repels you, what draws you closer. You are only human. You are only one person. Listen. Here is a metaphor. It is also a true story. I was at a party. I couldn’t look away. I was watching two boneless acrobats hang from a silk string in the window, wingless, the smooth green caterpillars were busy recreating their race. & though it was creation, it looked a whole lot like horror, how they twisted their bodies over each other, over & over & over (& over & over & over & over & over & over) until my stomach lurched, & though I was repelled I drew closer I wanted to know the secrets of losing shape of being historyless & limbless & blameless my god, I tell you, I was stunned at their complete permission both amazed and sickened by the sight of their endlessness, engulfed by selfishness, utterly enchanted by their borderless waves.

Poets Resist is published by Glass Poetry Press.
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