I want to be surrounded by splendor, but beauty is capitalism. This is to say
purchase power is how I was taught to love things & now I am exiled
in a country where living is only spectacle & roses, never bread.
How do I feed a village when my only skill is personal acquisition, not
distribution? My god, how wrong I was to covet dresses over firearms,
poetry books over agriculture. Ross sends me sunchokes from his garden
& I squint my eyes at them, trying to imagine the texture of drawing
food from the earth—my hands in dirt turn into rope pulling Good & asking
for forgiveness. They are killing us & we are all just going to the office,
watching tv & ordering out. I thought we were supposed to be resisting.
The deaths will accumulate like the snow & we will all be forced to forfeit
our lives for the revolution. I’m tired of hearing how nuanced it all is. It’s not.
They say it has everything to do with money & power, but what they want
us to forget is that it is about how we love. We are fighting for the right to
 

spend a storm inside
making soup & sourdough
& no one gets shot—

To hear poetry and to read poetry are different acts.

Reading poetry makes me feel calm.

And you, dear reader, I wonder if

you also feel this way.

Consider this articulation.

Reading poetry: You must gaze upon, pay attention to words, and

consider pacing,

an attentiveness not usually asked

in our contemporary world.

I gaze into your eyes, we remember to breathe.

Turn the page.

Reading poetry is the opposite of eating with

your phone

Without thought to the

opening and closing of one’s mouth

The taste and texture of the food on the edges and tips of

one’s tongue

Warmth of the food, and how it envelops you.

A different kind of information than the Scroll.