By: Mimi Jennings
Line up
paper dwelling places, facial recognition
databases.
Include elderberries & their contemporaries across doorways, folded
libraries, naked fantasies, parade floats.
Refold map, double back by the rail track &
slant
three
blocks
south
through the swimming pool.
Show some love here for whatever
shows up, whoever marries in (brash in-laws lengthways on
porches)
draw a shortcut & backslash past police firing ranges, freeway exchanges
you'll run rings around the middle
school hookup
switchgrass & break
up
car pools.
Plant in rows:
well-wheeled speculators,
under-funded legismakers,
underhanded regulators.
Useful hacks
& simple memes:
run lotto schemes
from empty laundromats & absent bagelbakers.
Redline out possible videotakers
sharpsighted muckrakers, coolheaded newshakers.
Take notes, call in “favors,” in quotes.
Cap knees, slit throats
total vacant shacks
tally
cemeteries
now count votes.
Mimi Jennings favors rap, sonnets, enigma; believes we are all kin. She taught French in Detroit, Saint Paul; English in France; dharma in prisons. Grants: Fulbright (1), NEH (2). Firsts: Park Bugle, Banfill-Locke, Saint Catherine University Creative Work. Published: Common Chord, Kosmos, Persimmon Tree, Negative Capability, Red Bird, Sleet, Silkworm11, others; hosts readings, circulates two poetry collections.