“in the criminal justice system, the people are represented
by two separate yet equally important groups:
the police who investigate crime
and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders.
these are their stories.”
LAW & ORDER (1990–2010)
police are not a group
women are not a group
children are a group
11,000 13,000 children
who prosecute the offenders
“it is not fair if you think of him as representative”
“we do not think of him as representative”
“we do not call him a ‘fucking creep’ because he is representative”
every day, on and off the bus
once a university made a mistake
universities are a group
senators are a group
et tu, senators?
in the criminal justice system the people are represented
“we couldn’t have said it better ourselves”
the university supports some military actions
the university supports most military actions
military actions are a group
that the university supports
involving the bombing
of other universities
terrorists are not a group
it would be convenient
hospitals are not a group hospitals are personal
two separate yet equally important groups
are not separate, the police who
investigate crime, the district attorneys who
prosecute the offenders offenders are not
the mistake was contextual e.g.
he wasn’t bringing a gun to campus
because he was a school shooter
he was a person who carries a gun
who was stopping by campus
he would have made perfect sense
a few blocks away school shooters
are a group, and these days more of them are surviving for trial
people who bomb schools almost always survive and
are not school shooters, they are a group
a university can support
snipers firing at adults and children outside
the police received calls from children inside the classroom
the police were scared to enter
the police received equipment
from the military this forms a group
snipers, a group
fucking creeps, a group most people
can identify though fucking creeps often
cannot identify themselves each other is a group
children identify each other
adults are higher up and doing something else
adults are a group who are killing children
these are two separate yet equally important groups
women and children
women and children first like on Titanic
on Titanic the ship the groups were not equally
important not like in Titanic
the movie Leo was representative
of the equal importance of the working class and he was better
at fucking and art
so, not equal it is OK that more men died
in the North Atlantic because men were more involved
in everything stupid with the ship sinking
but not most of them?
Titanic was a she and she died
but her body is important and James Cameron
really represented it in an unprecedented way
the people are represented
by the extras in Titanic
when the ship cracks into two separate yet
equally sinking ships the people are represented
by Falling Man on 9/11 an innocent man
falling from the soon to be falling towers
and him you should not describe as “chickens
coming home to roost”
we identify his silhouette as representative
chickens are a group
9/11 is a group but you can’t say why
15,000 children
no longer in Gaza, no longer anywhere
drone pilots a group
dreaming in infrared cannot recognize
each other can the offender
recognize himself in the people represented by
his prosecution who trespass against us
these are their stories hospitals
treating children for bullet wounds from snipers
no more hospitals these are their universities
this is self-defense what is a war on terror
fears are not a group
dreams are not a group
systems novels are a group
before 9/11 bin Laden was concerned
about dreams in his group of men
some men had told him they were seeing
the important buildings in their dreams
and he was concerned his plan would be
in people’s dreams everywhere
revealed he ordered his men:
don’t talk about your dreams anymore it
worked? Jon Stewart is not a group
anymore Jon Stewart is personal
people who don’t like seeing photos
on their phones of children dying while they’re
trying to post photos of their own children
this is a group deans are a group
and provosts you would recognize provosts
on Titanic librarians are
increasingly personally targeted by groups
every day, librarians doxing is personal
84 years later the Coeur de la Mer falls into the sea
Titanic predicts Falling Man
Leo is an American who will free you
from the epistemic burdens of your privilege
you will go to a real party
authenticity is a group and sincerity
real parties will not be televised
nation-states are a group
excused absences are a group
a student asked to be excused
because of “everything happening in the news”
we thought they meant Saturday, October 7
but they meant Friday, October 13
we thought they’d been affected by the events of Saturday, October 7
but they wanted Friday the 13th off, they were concerned
about fears
errors are a group
ghosts are not a group
historical murderers and current murderers
AI is not a group AI is no one
AI is a nation-state AI recommends targets
recommends targeting librarians, journalists, writers, teachers, children
collateral
children
collateral
AI has no access to dreams but feeds
on itself increasingly these days like chickens
in factory farming I would read
DeLillo but I don’t read men much
anymore it’s stupid
maybe if I stop reading them they will stop
emailing me maybe they will stop dreaming
of me reading their emails doing their stupid jobs
bombing, long the purview of men, these days is
increasingly inclusive drone pilots increasingly
as a group, diverse
and traumatized because they have to watch
their targets for so long very personally
before killing them these are their
traumas I respect DeLillo and would love
to be personally respected that way I did get $150
from the production of the movie White Noise
to film my house in Cleveland in the background
which they never did I think, I don’t know
I was authentically at work for 11 hours
that day I would divert the trolley for DeLillo
Pulitzer Prize winners are a group
empaths are a group
newsies are a group and al-Qaeda
former groups are still groups
you can make a new group especially if you are
a corporation like in East Palestine, Ohio
spelled Palestine said Pal-uh-steen when the train derailed
and a corporation lit all the vinyl chloride stored on the train
“vent and burn” to prevent
some other disaster, some worse disaster
than a cloud of burning chemicals
that blocked the sun as if
identifying with the filming of White Noise 80 miles
away, which was in Cleveland, where they film a lot of
movies these days not because they want to film
in Cleveland they want to film
nowhere a city no one would recognize and where
you can close downtown or a highway was anyone
going there a wealth of vacant spaces that look
dystopian for superheroes and make
great background for CGI it’s good to be empty
for the arrival of technology the business of nostalgia
skyscraper craze of the 1920s
“Superman was born in Cleveland in 1933”
abandoned factories are a group
abandoned malls that are now Amazon fulfillment centers
foreign-owned real-estate holding companies are a group
landlords are personal
a year later it was determined no one had to burn
all the chemicals into the air of East Palestine, that wasn’t right
a year later some people said that these people
who were working class in Ohio probably already had
headaches, blurred vision, bloody noses, rashes already
before the chemical cloud “federal investigators fell ill after brief visits”
I just learned they can put machine guns
on drones sniper rifles on drones I learned this
because they are using these technologies on children
in Gaza the Israeli military, the US military
people
who have never heard drones buzzing
all day every day above them
are a group a group including me
who has only seen drones one or two at a time like
when the police kill a young man in his car at a traffic stop
in Cleveland and later there’s a march and that man’s sister
asks everyone “white folks to the outside,
black folks to the middle” asks us to kneel on the hot asphalt
in the intersection where he died
if you look up just then you will see
a drone
it’s hard to picture a sound you’ve never heard
like the crack of a ship that big in half
which we rewatch on New Year’s
the descendants of First Officer Murdoch
who you will remember shoots a working-class man
in a struggle over lifeboats
then shoots himself, ashamed his descendants
demanded an apology from James Cameron
the movie was not representative
“Mr Murdoch died like a man,
doing his duty” these days you can listen
to recordings of icebergs calving underwater
icebergs 50 miles long and due to technology
you can hear this inhuman vibration
it’s just on YouTube
Radiohead is not a group
Thom Yorke is a group
Billy Zane plus a baby is a group
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young is not a group
Neil Young is a group
these days the past is becoming more
recognizable when they sent the National Guard
to Kent State when the National Guard
opened fire when Neil Young
put Nixon’s name in the song “Ohio” this was seen as
courageous now it’s banal
#resistance but the past retains
its differences now you can make fun of a president
nonstop on SNL and still basically be
supporting him, he likes to watch there is no such thing as
bad publicity all of publicity is a group
now you can release a protest song like
Mos Def’s “Katrina Klap” and it will not be named
one of the greatest songs of all time no that was true then
or whenever Mos Def who is now Yasiin Bey had
a feeding tube forcibly
shoved down his throat in protest of the forcefeedings
of prisoners on hunger strike in protest at Guantanamo Bay
which never closed they were never charged
promised an end but it has never come
every day, a tube forced down, pulled up
of the song “Ohio” critics now note “The revolution never came”
Spotify is a group
social media platforms which are legally not publishers are a group
crisis pregnancy centers are a group
the past is not a group
I tell my mom about the mistakes made at my university
she worked her whole career part-time at mistaken universities
“I’m so sorry” she says, having put out a dish of the olives
I like “You are going to have to burn it all down”
“vent and burn” and everywhere now
students are gathering
when you were young (this part is personal)
you wrote a novella about Leo (I did)
the novella was about books Leo might read
it was set in Berlin which seemed important
important, the number of monuments in Berlin
Erinnerungskultur an American
can wander through the gray undulating concrete
slabs grouped right downtown by the Reichstag
an attempt to mark absence, to make the absence made
by the Shoah visible downtown here
where the neoclassical gate is now a gate again
tor like a goal the wall blocked it for decades
East, grouped West
and across the field of slabs towering
without names stone coffins faceless
without names of the monument
young people sunbathe take selfies
is this disrespectful or is this
also the spectacle and later in the many shadows
of the monument at night anyone could
get lost, go dark it’s not memory
because you weren’t there you don’t know
you are the descendant of who was not killed
nearby in Berlin a woman stands by herself
holding a sign:
“As a Jew and an Israeli, stop the genocide in Gaza”
she is arrested because there is no right
to assemble here, in this public square gatherings are
verboten a cop says
in a long conversation
you can watch on YouTube
in which, often smiling, this woman asks
a young German cop how she, an individual person,
could be a gathering? gatherings
are verboten, he says
again “because I am standing here alone”
she says, smiling, “this is not a gathering” all this is in German
which maybe you learned in school or, if you are Leo,
because your mother was German and born
in a bomb shelter this resplendent woman on YouTube
explains that it is exactly because
gatherings are forbidden
that she decided
to stand here alone
with her sign, which describes her in the singular
where, she asks, am I allowed to express an opinion,
if not here?
doesn’t a gathering require at least two people, she asks,
if not three?
at least nine cops escort her to a van
where she is arrested with her silver purse, silver hair,
her good sense of humor, her good sense
of what gatherings are, what genocide is
around her a group does assemble to film her arrest
around her cops create the gathering
for which she will be punished
“weil sie alleine auf den Hermannplatz steht
14 October 2023”
at my public high school I learned
a surprising amount of German later
at private schools I signed up
for courses taught in German then didn’t
do the reading ever I never did
A-minuses are a group
at private schools the student encampments begin
to protest occupations
often we need to occupy at private schools students
expect to belong, to be heard no
at private schools students expect the university
to need to pretend
a pretense of belonging, your voice is important
illusions are useful especially
as they vanish “I am a professor”
a professor says as the police
slam her head against concrete
on the concrete slabs of the Holocaust memorial
all 2,711 slabs for obvious reasons they applied
a chemical to repel graffiti the corporation who made
this chemical also made, decades earlier and
through a subsidiary
the chemical Zyklon B once a pesticide
then used to kill 1.1 million people
in the death camps gas was cheaper than bullets
is why the name
for the killing squads across Europe: Einsatzgruppen
“deployment groups” when it became known
that the makers of Zyklon B were involved with,
were profiting from, the making of
the memorial that was controversial but
some people argued that almost all
German companies had been
involved in the killing
we cannot exclude all of German society
a politician said a ship that big
cannot sink the encampments
are asking about corporations and investments
about the university’s money and is it profiting
off the occupation of Palestine
is it profiting off drones with machine guns
the surveillance tech that helps them target
the bulldozers that destroy houses so people
of a different ethnicity can live in that place
we cannot exclude all of that money?
all of money is a group
college presidents are a group and it’s not going well
in 2007 when everywhere the economy crashed
I remembered the vomit in 2002
on the handle of the outer door of my dorm
someone almost made it out but not quite
poor guy and all those young dudes
pissing down the stairs all weekend
had become i-bankers
or strategic consultants
and I had become someone
who says “i-banker”
after 2008 everyone everywhere knew their work
especially in Greece, for example, or Florida
of course they crashed the economy they couldn’t even
throw up outside
this was the only door
legacy admissions are a group
subprime mortgages are a group
too big to fail is a group
dads are not a group dads can go either way
dad bods are a group
date rapists
the chemical to repel the graffiti had already been applied
to so many slabs, was the issue
what a waste, to throw out all this concrete?
just to make a point about not profiting
from mass murder “she is made of iron, sir,
I assure you she can, and she will”
at the encampment students are sharing
a blanket they crocheted and getting
sunburned they’re hosting a poetry reading
and eating chicken tenders
is this safe? it’s true they are teaching
themselves elsewhere at an open mic
a young person finally makes a joke
about 9/11 it’s OK
but she gets the number of flights wrong
is our education system to blame
people born in bomb shelters are a group
bomb shelters are personal
it’s the number of planes she gets wrong
this young comedian not the 110 flights of stairs
no joke about each tower’s 110 flights of stairs
which we now know were too narrow
firefighters going up and people fleeing down
had no room
to pass each other she did not joke
about this or how people jumped
in groups from above where the planes hit
the photographer who captured Falling Man said
from the foot of the towers he saw
flickers of light and heard sounds like a crack
this was people, falling later named
“the jumpers” the photograph
later banned from circulation too personal
too perfect how one plummeting body bisects
the planes of the towers planes like surfaces
or walls there are stairs in
so many buildings in Gaza there are people
fleeing down those stairs every airstrike
every time at the encampment nearest
Lake Erie students paint a wall
they are allowed to paint on campus
a little custom, a shared space
where they paint a Palestinian flag and the phrase
“I dream of breaking the siege”
spoken in a video by a Palestinian child
while still alive they paint
the numbers: 12,300 students at this private school
15,000 children killed numbers are
verboten or Palestinian dreams
immediately the wall is painted over
though this is not I think
customary but Palestine is different
Palestine requires hiring contractors
to come in at night and paint things white again
students stand against the wall in protest
and the contractor
paints right over them
this paid man sprays white paint
right over the human bodies
of students, graffiti of their forms
the equipment makes
a pleasant noise the students are
wearing face shields which one of them
brought in every group
there’s one planner, a more prepared person
it’s hard to get at Lake Erie mostly the shoreline
is private like a monument to Superman
the city never built in a classic trolley problem
the trolley is unstoppable and you are the driver
late in October 2023 I received an email
from an American poet he was worried, he told me
about the safety of his children
who are Jewish swastikas have been painted
in schools swastikas are appearing
I received this email after I had publicly used
the word genocide in the case of Gaza
in the case of Gaza, it is dangerous
to call that a genocide
the American poet wrote me to say
he meant dangerous
to him and his children his logic seemingly
and it is common these days
that some children may only be safe
if other children are killed first
“another 10,000 bodies have yet to be fully identified”
it is not that he intends their deaths
it is an unintended consequence he thinks
of something he calls his safety
the president says things will improve
if he can just get to bed earlier
“they’re an official army”
a man in Gaza says in the video
unlike his family members he was only
shot in the arm “but there were no questions,
no what is your name?
no what is your ID number?”
summary as in summary execution
in the group of men who were his family
each was Palestinian and in the case of Gaza
this word summarizes them and causes
their deaths while poets write other poets
mourning how they feel abandoned
by the left suggesting
it is antisemitic to use the word genocide
to oppose genocide a referendum is upcoming
on the legality of abortion statewide
civil rights you’ve personally always had
are now on the ballot yes or no?
uterus-having, a group everyone gets a say
in the case of sepsis will doctors get to
save your life fetuses are faceless which is
godlike a person who is not a person because
a person has their own body
at least for a while
the trolley problem first got going
as a means to discuss abortion
philosophers got to weigh in
using train metaphors my identity
as a member of a group
whose rights are newly vanishing
from law from order did not occur
to a man in your inbox meanwhile
the autonomy of others
we’re getting grouped Chief Justice
William Rehnquist had a Miller Lite
at lunch everyday everyone felt
comfortable am I the left?
like this poem, a new verse to “Cortez the Killer”
by Neil Young and Crazy Horse
doesn’t change a thing in pre-9/11
movies Titanic ’97, Saving Private Ryan
’98 there’s often a frame narrative
we begin with a regular old person
from the future which is also the present
the movie reveals how extraordinary
this ordinary grandma or grandpa is
Tom Hanks died for him
Leo died for her
on the grand staircase Leo turns around
extending a hand
how the Nazis and even the capitalists were
thus transcended a triumph
living on in the body of this old American
this fetus of history through which
a revolutionary libido once flickered like
an inciting incident of penetration or machine-gun fire
and in the background which is the present
all these blond bougie grandchildren appear
this group of ’90s extras never out of work
sporting tennis skirts polo shirts in peachy colors
Rehnquist had only 3 law clerks
so they could all play doubles
together before 9/11
the audience often got reassured
that history was meaningful
because it had led to us
Tom Hanks died so we could live
in the cornfields of Iowa the dead inspire a son
to play catch with his dad Tom Hanks’s son
is the founder of “white boy summer” though
he regrets the term’s appropriation by racists
something so innocent
about the aging face, its return
to blamelessness as if you can’t be
blamed for what you can’t change
now could only have changed
then the opposite of potential
a group the very old and very young
pissing shitting screaming it helps to forget
who we were in order to care for us or
outsource it to strangers when
the American president begins his decline
gaping glassy look wet-eyed confusion
suddenly the media, the adults in the room,
kindly but firmly cry out
although they anointed him the New York Times
will not be embarrassed again
Netanyahu embarrassing yes
genocide no
weapons of mass destruction no
Wannsee Conference historically
electoral college can go either way
Taylor Swift’s cats
Aaron Sorkin
the photographer who captured Falling Man
was present at the assassination of RFK
whose wife then widow implored him not to take
the pictures he took liberals are not
a group in America liberals are a bad
summary junk forensic science
how do you prefer to relate to yourself
and Rachel Maddow in the late days of an empire
whose client state now conducts
its business we will not send 2,000-pound bombs
we will only send 500-pound bombs
we are holding
a line Biden is a worse liar
than Trump he can be
embarrassed he can be forced to call
the daughter of the truck driver who in a traffic accident
killed his wife and baby daughter
Biden apologizes for publicly
saying the truck driver
who was not known to be drunk
was drunk lies are personal
and delegates Democrats vote for legislation
to make it illegal to count the dead
in Gaza the death count has stopped
going up the living can no longer
count the dead the media are not
allowed in searching for food
water mobile service searching for an intact body
you could count plastic bags of body
the Hamas-affiliated drunk driver
killed my wife and daughter the Hamas-run
stop sign many presidents
are lawyers many people bring their own children
to block aid trucks at the border of Gaza
you can see children
stamping on food
meant for other children it’s just on YouTube
truck drivers digging their trucks out
of not snow but spilled sugar
hostages yes
detainees no
political prisoners no
stays of execution no
family annihilations an American genre
domestic and now
whole families struck
from the civil registry in Gaza
administrative detention means
no charge juveniles
minors children kids
military-aged males military-aged
children adolescents conscripts
human shields
paramilitary groups and
lone gunmen are a group
and paradoxes
gestures of solidarity
the American assassination of bin Laden
fueled a resurgence in Pakistan
of polio the CIA had
used vaccination workers
to find children related
to bin Laden then to find
bin Laden whose kids listened outside the door
so the Taliban began
to execute women who worked
to vaccinate children
shots to the head
roadside bombs you may think
you can pick and choose among doctrines, among aesthetics
whose dead whose world
to come the assassination of Heydrich
succeeded cost to the resistance was high
a village annihilated at least 82
children though some who were blond
were rescued, adopted out German
families the assassination
of Hitler failed and historians
describe it as motivated in part by
embarrassment the Nazis had become
embarrassing clearly losing
the war Tom Cruise initially thought
“thousands of prisoners-of-war will be good for our agriculture”
but later brought a bomb in a briefcase
to a meeting with Hitler which failed
though killed the stenographer and indirectly
thousands killed in retribution including
some deaths that were filmed
for Hitler to personally watch
polio is appearing in sewage in Gaza
virulent borders not known to viruses
an Israeli soldier films himself
blowing up a water treatment plant
assistant district attorneys
are women whose struggles
to reconcile the criminal justice system
as Sam Waterston knows it to work
with their ideals, what they learned in school
our drama through the summer
charges roll out or get dropped
“pro-Palestine” in my experience
college students may be known to have committed rape
and receive their degrees but the protests
made people uncomfortable
I miss how in church when it came time for
communion, someone slid the railing out and made
a little kneeling place open your mouth
an adult places this on your tongue
a child is given a sip of wine
a child is given the blood of the new covenant
which was shed
for you and for many
first half-hour, investigation
second half-hour, trial always a twist
Adolf Hitler killed himself
Heinrich Himmler killed himself
Joseph Goebbels killed himself
Magda Goebbels killed herself
and their six children
Hermann Göring killed himself
one night before his execution
Albert Speer got twenty years
Rudolf Hess got life
Rudolf Hess killed himself
Emmy Göring got one year
The resistance killed Reinhard Heydrich
Hitler killed Arthur Nebe
Israel killed Adolf Eichmann
famously, but later
one day you will be scrolling
a respected liberal newspaper looking
for a populist advice column
which crowdsources the just resolution
of domestic disputes (is it right for my wife
to fool our guests, refilling bottles of
fancy hand soap with cheap hand soap?)
“You Be the Judge” and suddenly there
Trump appears, blood smeared across his huge smug
face aesthetically impeccable he has
stopped mid-flight to raise a fist
the Secret Service, grouped around him
rush him away from the next bullet
“a distance from which a decent marksman
could reasonably hit a human-sized target”
the shooter didn’t make the cut
didn’t make his high-school rifle team
“bomb-making materials in his car”
the boys of Columbine ’99 discourse initiators
their bombs never detonated
planned to blow up the cafeteria
fire like snipers on everyone fleeing
this is a difference between terrorists
and the state it’s hard to personally
build a bomb institutional support
’93 first attack on the World Trade Center
bomb in a van killed only six
next time, something bigger big planes
into big buildings when 9/11 was called
“the biggest work of art there has ever been”
that was controversial but others say
jet fuel can’t melt steel beams
truth is not like a face
more like a wisecrack an expression
at the end of one trial start
of the next murder you can believe
in something but not its truth not its
consequences you can believe and not
believe not an adversarial system
not an argument but a raised eyebrow
an absence of moral borders
observed like say
they didn’t have to rig the vote say
the hunger for vengeance
is like this it’s as if
we were waiting to take Iraq’s oil fields
it’s as if they’d shot out the knees
of the protestors last time
the last peaceful march it’s as if
in 2018 by the “Gaza separation fence”
Israeli snipers shot 6,106 people
hit over 80 percent in their lower limbs
after 9/11 the grandkids learned the word “blowback”
who caused the cause a 9/11 joke
signals that you wouldn’t invade Iraq
and you wouldn’t do 9/11 either
whoever did Trump has less
regard for human life than his would-be
assassin not uncommon
assassinations can go either way
Joe Biden won’t kill himself
don’t hold your breath
I used to argue with a big 9/11 Truther
whose evidence against the Official Narrative
included how the hijackers got lap dances the night
before they could not have been
pious he said I personally thought
this was stupid before dying most people
would get that lap dance epistemically
consistency has its own problems how often
do men think about the Roman Empire
how often do men think about
Iraq #notjustmen
Lynndie England’s smile
“disaffected young men”
armies are not disaffected
unless you report a sexual assault
for Leo to star in The Beach (2000)
post-Titanic heartthrob was risky, critics said
but his performance angry, deceitful
foreshadows later, better performances
while representing peak ’90s boy
frosted tips, puka necklace
often talking about backpacking
often funded by a dad invisibly
if you do not have that dad you might be
disaffected Leo’s problem is that
he cannot be taken seriously as an actor
when he’s so hot but if he weren’t so hot
he couldn’t be an actor
to live this paradox Leo changes
the name of his friend group
no longer “the Pussy Posse” now
“the Wolf Pack” 40,000 self-
identified beta males r/Incels
I personally once dated
a guy because his friend
told me I was a problem
in the friend group had made out with two
different guys in the same group
a problem I had to choose he announced
so I chose the one who wasn’t just then
embarrassing me though later he was
embarrassing Joe Biden
was Obama’s beta which is progress
you can still join Jordan Peterson’s subscription base
you can still join ISIS
control initiates its own order
but can come from anywhere
the law never made me date anyone
“I’m going to backpack around Thailand actually”
Jeffrey Epstein’s flight manifest
the Harvard Corporation
interns
people who have appeared in photos
with Jeffrey Epstein
noted linguists star psychologists literary
superagents former presidents current princes
“aspiring fashion models and their friends”
cosmologists AI experts “women ages
19 to 23” famous physicists hedge fund
managers “network of masseuses”
computer scientists “mothers
of his children” modeling agents
“she didn’t seem like a child”
men posed in front of chalkboards
with math on them post-Good Will Hunting (1997)
the months, the years spent awaiting trial
are not dramatized
in Law & Order as I get older
I have trouble sleeping as the genocide
gets older in the middle of the night
I read Wikipedia pages that seem innocuous
biography of Jewel
or of actors you’ve seen in one thing
then maybe you’re sad for them
most people with Wikipedia pages
come from the same class background
this isn’t stated but you can tell
by dads’ occupations I used to say
of a sexist workplace “I wish I would just
get groped in an elevator” thinking this
would finally be something someone
would understand then I realized
no me, I can only write a poem about it
and whatever floor you’re trying to get to
he came from there noir is a genre
about professionals and the limits
of the institutions in which
their work occurs learn about it
at Hudson University the best is when
you find a less popular Wikipedia page
it’s for a specific fandom like
a respected rodeo cowboy this page is obviously
written badly by one person a distinct voice
not yet vanished into the uncanny bland of
the great online the worst is the length
of each page for each gun the worst is when
you see the video even just the start of it
Israeli soldiers select a man
why did you press play?
a detainee lying down not by choice
on the prison floor in a group they pull him
to a corner I won’t say what happens
did you watch it the hospital describes
his injuries from which
you can reconstruct what you can’t see
his face he is a person who lives beyond
this moment police dogs
types of bullets Hillary Clinton’s pantsuit nation
keep your boobs “locked and loaded”
she advised then pitied herself a while
in the woods remembering her dad’s
small but successful textile business
objection, your honor
argumentative
when the outcome of the trial
is not just, you can see the toll
on the face of Sam Waterston
on the faces of the assistant district attorneys
only some of whom he’s slept with according
to canon sustained
when the soldiers in the video are arrested
for the rape of a detainee a mob
tries to free them a mob including a cabinet minister
Judgment at Nuremberg
is a 1961 American epic legal drama
the defendants are judges
and the judges are judges
“the Nuremberg trials held in the
American Zone ended July 14, 1949.
there were ninety-nine defendants
sentenced to prison terms. not one
is still serving his sentence”
the final title card reads on YouTube today
in Israeli military courts to which
Palestinians are subject, the conviction
rate is over 99% the sentence for
administrative detention is six months
which can be extended indefinitely
indefinite sentences
these courts sentence children
over 99% of children are guilty
the most common charge is
throwing stones
in 2023 protests occur across Israel
against Netanyahu’s “planned judicial overhaul”
which will reduce the independence
of the courts Netanyahu has personally already
been indicted on the streets
thousands of people don’t protest how
the justice system treats Palestinians
but how it might treat Israelis, in the future
“they released us into a bigger prison”
objection beyond the scope
“I love Law & Order because it’s the same
episode every single time” says John Mulaney
comedian with a baby face sweet prep school Catholic vibe
then drug addiction recovery
his dad was a lawyer, Wiki says mom, too
a Law & Order joke contrasts
the comfy repetitiveness of the genre with
the extremity of the violence “dude people have died”
a place to feel how justice would feel
where is that place
SVU had an Epstein episode in 2011 “Flight”
he wasn’t rearrested till 2019 they did one then too
Chinatown, the best neo-noir, was made
by a child rapist in one comedy special
John Mulaney is accompanied by a group
of singing and dancing children
striped-shirt Americana contrast
between their innocent freckled faces
and the ironic content of the songs they sing
as a child I was not convicted of
“incitement on social media”
WCNSF is a group
“wounded child no surviving family”
some children are children
others must be something else
a judge determines if the child
is competent to testify
the availability of anesthesia determines
if anesthesia is used in late July 2024
I arrive at a meeting of the Cuyahoga County Council
slightly late and I look for a seat
the room is unusually full because
some of us are there to demand that the council
divest from Israel this Ohio county holds $16 million
in Israel Bonds other people are there to demand
the county continue its support
they say divestment is antisemitic if you ask
someone about an open seat beside them
you are probably asking someone on one side
of the issue or the other though the man
next to me just scrolls his phone I am not wearing
anything that would identify me
I am wearing a pro-poetry t-shirt
so my sympathies aren’t identified
to my seat-neighbors until I begin clapping
for some public comments and not others
I meant to arrive in time to sign up, to claim
three minutes to address the council
even planned what I might say
but I am not timely have never been I have never been
a joiner, I think, someone who joins I consider
on my drive home but that’s not it, exactly
I have often belonged to multiple groups
but not one definitively I love protests but never
have I organized them in part because of chronic
illness which makes me unpredictable
unreliable suddenly there’s chanting
my side is chanting, a disruption, a rupture
that causes the council members unusually to leave
their own meeting stand and file out although
we’re still on the first page of a long agenda
I didn’t arrive in time to get the handout
with the words of the chant
“Right now bombs are falling on Gaza”
“Right now bombs are falling on Gaza”
in a video of the protest I walk a little vaguely
out of chambers since now we’ve been thrown out by police
I chant by listening, glimpsing others’ handouts I walk
lacking others’ clarity though I could have
considered my own face I am sometimes not
a good representative of myself
in between as if between
a river and a sea
those who comment in support
of Israel Bonds: “there are two sides”
a middle-aged man addresses the council
“one side shares our principles”
he names things like personal freedom and creativity
which are valued, he says by Israel and America
“the other does not” he says this side believes
in martyrdom a culture of death and hatred
he’s trying to persuade
the council or get claps from his group which he does
his racism is too deep for TV could only be
on public access deliver us from nuance
at another meeting another man made a case
for supporting Israel saying that since October 7 Israel
had not yet killed as many people in Gaza
as the US killed after 9/11 in Iraq and Afghanistan
so asking Israel to cease fire
was a “double standard”
he really said that, like to be western is to be owed
your own Iraq, your own Afghanistan
to destroy on your own occasion
like say you are looking for an end but you see
only yourself through a glass vaguely
your hesitant presence the offender
if you are lucky enough to get to witness
to identify with survival
from the river to the sea
how many children
everyone, once a child
I don’t think of myself as childless
I think of myself as not a mother personally
if you don’t have your own children you should
consider all children yours equally
but you can’t children aren’t imaginary
they can’t live in a poem yet they need their own poem
to live both is a place whose hand
you may have to serve yourself the subpoena
what future may your speech serve
from the river to the sea
at a funeral for one of Cleveland’s great Black poets
one of America’s unacknowledged legislators
who mentored a group of “movement conscious”
young poets in the ’60s
when he passes at age 98 one of these formerly young
poets speaks at the service one time, he says,
we were in a little trouble we were all in jail
and the cops started asking us about Russell Atkins
we couldn’t believe it what did Russell
the poet our teacher have to do with this?
cops had heard he was a poet so they were saying
he was involved with drugs trying to get him
for something there’s never been a difference
this young poet who is now old says he says
our poetry is the life they don’t want us to have
our poetry is what they are policing
does a bomb whistle or is that also nostalgia
like redactions like black sites
say I have secured a plea deal for three detainees
in Guantanamo who will now remain
right where they are but be called prisoners
what wasn’t a clue
to the endgame
a stone thrown from the future that would later clarify
I have been a precursor to genocide
I remember playgrounds and a small stone
stuck in the bottom of my friend’s jelly shoe
never saw her again who will sort so-called
combatants from civilians dismembered
beneath the rubble
who, a body the lawyers
slide into place day after day
there is another place
how many days waiting
from the river to the sea
who will accept your allocution
will the lifeboats turn back
in clichés the river is so personal
can’t step in it twice even your poem
how it erases your scent
whoever pursues
any name on the manifest
a womblike expanse our solidarity
“I may not get there with you” the jury box
opens its doors in the County Council meeting
Leo turns around lets slip through his fingers
the biggest ship in the world
the most moral army
does the river
look for where are you your scent along with
the other 39,000 40,000
186,000 at the heart of the ocean
if Leo turns around
a dream is becoming a real place
someone is building a playground
someone says the rubble
could still be cleared it won’t take
that long, they say meaning
they will not give up from the river
to the sea is the place they will keep looking
for you not a list of names though these
are your names no
they’ll know you from the look
of recognition you would have had
to see a face you loved
a child all grown up now
this is what has been lost
but we are meant to become
a place in which
you will each be found
April–December 2024
