Torsade Literary Space Dum-dum (poem)
Dum-dum
What the assembly wants to understand
Everyone we are on page three hundred sixty-four
The hour is near the break
Watch through years of circling the outerbelt
Neighborhoods go down once the charred shape of a wing shorn
Plane was a moment worth eulogizing stamped
On the split-levels of a small town
Once, when human tragedy was big
Say you’re nice
Say you’re honest
Hearsay she says makes an orphan of the law
Horns and motors sound, the auto parts ad ends
And the blowhard begins
You’re in the store
The woman snatches herself away you say
“I’d like to buy this”
Make it dumb for the people
Dum-dum doom like the melody to stop
The absent hand probing the chip bag
Mouth-breathing flea behind the louvered door
A faint shadow sidling out of view
A child of six or seven told she has no future
the radio plays Angie Baby Eleanor Rigby
She will be crazy and lonely one day
Yet here, the boogeyman snags himself
on the tricky mechanism
Not that he doesn’t get you
Dum-dum
First to Come Ashore
(2016, Stephanie Foster)