CONCENTRATE AND ASK AGAIN

by Alyssa Mazzoli


     –    place and year unknown

Little quakes under everyone’s

feet. No mass

destruction, just personal

exit slides. Birds winging off one

by one from a telephone wire. It’s okay

it’s just the world growing

in sleep. A boy on the sidewalk stops

for a caterpillar. Stops

to make sure it can cross, while around

it the others have been shoed

into gunk. Their death in the sun

this one flat certainty.

The boy all in black and holding

his books. There’s so much love it wrecks

the concrete. So much

love it shakes me down.


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