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Accounts of a Reckoning (PDF) !1 of !10 Day 1 i stand before you a lone figure conjured by crisis a saturday in march last night i bought a bottle from a local bar where a wan patron coughed me into fleeing undress my contamination on the stairs in the nude i wipe the emerald glass with bleach each day a promise of absurdity an avant theater of innovative hygiene gestures for nights now sleep incomplete i awake upright a saturday in march the calm before the storm recitation incantation the calm before the storm in silence the virus moves yet i hear rain & cars & birds & neighbors i suck my teeth into second guessing each day a page to turn each night a thumbing we only at at the tip of the prologue of this unfolding tome a saturday in march the jasmine tree in the courtyard floods my heart with smell & i weep without water !2 of !10 Day 41 eltras sister is driving up from florida to stay with her & her other sister is coming across from the city eltra needs help with the twins mike is sick across the street at a hotel alaina walked 10 miles yesterday afraid of the subway & mike the other mike his father died & brians mom died & jayne said she knows 10 people who have had it & recovered & mikaela too she knows people too & if those people recovered then mike will too & charles has cabin fever & also cancer so he has not left the house since idk when & peter is now on call in boston working overnights & im not sure what greg is doing he has not returned my calls & cori is upstate & bridget is minneapolis & dan has sealed himself off i should call him & this evening i am delivering some lentils rice &. wine to simone but right now i am here hitting refresh trying to buy a box of vegetables while writing this accounting for love !3 of !10 Day 79 this is not a protest poem nor a poem about a protest i have not been designated nor do i designate myself this is a poem about the synthesis experienced while sipping a glass of water the day after the day when marching down third street in the middle of a traffic jam of voice in the middle of a pandemic my attention turned on itself i began & ended with my feet in parallel motion with multitudes as we merged into an avenue-long loud echo cheering for black life in America as a phalanx of riot police enforced the duality between present & future this is not a poem about whiteness although i am white this is poem about the inattention i paid to a nectarine i ate earlier this morning as i thought trust less the compass of my authority the center of wherever i am is a reckoning from attention paid to where i place myself liberation is a meal served also eaten !4 of !10 Day 177 a ring in our ears ringing its a heatwave friends live over here next me come out to 1310 west imperial highway off the 110 heat leaks through the ceiling space for this same silence for the family hands up guns down every earthquake breaks something the hearts of aunts & the knees of uncles no matter the temperature its always burning in this our vale of death if you cant beat them then subscribe now if you want more content or how about the song of those cicadas on a voice note from mom sent from the south all we go in one breath for justice justice justice justice we shall pursue !5 of !10 Day 195 Part II nothing works not the bathtub not the phones of the plutocrats screwing us over in front of our faces !6 of !10 Day 209 my head buoys in open water next to the pacific coast highway i submerge reemerge its not working right sort of like the camaro that just struggled into park out of which a nude person opens the door to put a plastic bag down & drives off i use the water in an arrangement of my arms to work the current away from the shore until land is a conglomeration i worry i could drown but thats all back on land i worry if my friends are dead who are sick the fire mountains in my lower back i think im not able enough for peace the head rises & falls like a lung an old hand on an fevered chest do you see the head as i do or maybe you see your own on your shoulders above then under the dapples strokes of wet hair cold muscles these options for grounding i get into things in side me to see them as they are you can see them too for you !7 of !10 Day 239 present shifts to past in a projection after a week long day cleaved time into eras these gargoyles perched on our shoulders dissolve into miracles of air people dance to the counting of ballots at once everywhere strangers move in orgasms of defiance in eruptions of bodies we have witnessed on the nightly news in countries where gaudy odes to strongmen are eventually toppled by riotous joy yet here we are cutting it up & close at the possibility of a coup down sunset a jam of happy cars thread through a universe in the throngs two men kiss beneath the flag to recalibrate its complexity its multitudes of hurt for us for whom these hours we have waited for years no longer a tool to bludgeon meaning we reclaim the broad stripes and bright stars in the middle of the street for the length of one day clouds in merriment overhead cleanse us of gathered fears time breaks we knew it would not last but we did not care !8 of !10 Day 261 he trembles he having cause to tremble the physical phone is attached to a metaphysical bureaucracy orchestrated to murder hope by default all bureaucracies resemble the operating software of microsoft office which is to say they are seemingly harmless & out of date should you picture bureaucracy do you picture the dmv he cannot stay there there is worse there is louisiana which is hell somewhere in mexico he tore his passport in two shreds that is awful she says in a response to andrew while sorting through magazines sammy his cockatiel just died the attorney barks at me while walking her blind dog without a pause im going inside now for weed sushi & video games an aura of bureaucracy surrounds us freedom as i now understand it is the opposite of space along a line !9 of !10 Day 276 if you played an instrument it would be the trumpet simone says not a piano nor a saxophone when you ask why she makes big hands !10 of !10 Day 279 a day is prayer i ignore sometimes i bow before eating if i remember to enact a ritual bereft of resonance i count calories needing to leave the device behind a locked door to trick myself out of its slick fascism i remember jewish mystics murdered by germany without a residue of silence my inheritance is verbosity overcompensation if i die before you i instruct her on the freeway to the mountains bury me in the sky ask my lovers to hike ten miles out in silence i pay respects to the dying who now alone in their final confrontation without guidance on shapeshifting a day is prayer i ignore peril lurks with my eyes closed i press my feet against it .
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