A misfire of justice.
The worry of something hard and smooth.
The tactile test of opal along the fingers.
The soft parts of the flower or the hard stature of a man imposed.
In the terrarium of the inner city the lid cracked and not enough
peanut butter to spread the length of four children.
Perhaps a therapy of furniture, two minutes on the couch
in between shifts, an entire living room set $59 a week.
Cigarette butts and a used condom on the sidewalk.
Tobacco stuffed in paper and sold in cartons.
Three days wages at a time.
Here azaleas bloom only in books and a plastic crocodile
in the back of an abandoned car.
Wheels and tires too far gone to tempt petty crimes.
On a street corner a blue light warns of a higher power.
The fact at any moment a man’s hand can reach down and grab you.
The eco-system remains artificially out of balance.
Paint comes unstuck from the walls.
The sun splatters white across a window sill
and nails hum under the strain of it all.
The center of the stoop gives way until from the edge
of the road it resembles a smile.
This poem appeared in the Hole in the Head Review, May 2020.