Summer Litany

Content warning: gun violence

Summer Litany

                                                       "poetry only changes the poet."
                                                                              Mahoud Darwish

Things are falling apart and all I seem to do
is write poems about the moon

or the sweat heat of a glorious Chicago August evening
the tk-tk-tk time-keeping of sprinkler heads
and the Doppler growl of a motorcycle bombing along Cicero Avenue

or the tinny salsa beat from an old radio two doors down
the beer bottle condensation between my fingers
and the last of the daylight through my neighbors' flags

and how barely a mile from me, across from Chopin Park
over by St. Ladislaus Parish, an angry man takes
his registered Canik TP9 from a gun safe,

crosses the street and fires a nine millimeter bullet
through the head of a nine-year-old girl
standing in her doorway with her scooter and a paleta

and there's blood and ice cream on the floor of the vestibule
and my poems will never clean it up

and things are falling apart
and I'm ashamed to look at the moon.


©2024 F.Eifrig

From Last Leaves Magazine, Issue 8