SQN - Sine Qua Non - Issue Two - Journal - Page 97
say he put that there. He made that river
a wartime trench. At Rice University, I write
with students next to a piece of the Berlin Wall,
inspiring now, mostly, in its deconstruction—
one side concrete austere, empty; on the other
a heart above salut, mes amis curling cursively.
Elsewhere, still, barriers and checkpoints wrapped
in metal thorns keep humans apart, hide deaths
as though slaughter was ever a natural process.
Behold the ramparts sharp and barbarous. Not
every wall is a fascist monument, though many
of them are. My beloved tried to make ours
beautiful, animal as our state believes us to be.
It’s not the same. It’s different. I promise. We can
move our art elsewhere, lift each frame gently
from their nails like wire unwound from a post,
our soft hands open and full, so often unscathed.
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