Cheryl Keeler
Moms
Moms make a wall of yellow shirts,
bike helmets & cloth masks,
face-to-face with federal agents—
all of which have moms
all of which stand on booted feet
grown by those moms
all of which hold weapons in arms
grown by those moms
all of which shield unique noses
designed inside those moms.
Even the one who ordered them here
had a mom.
He, too, started as an embryo
inside that mom
a clump of cells.
He learned to wiggle his toes
and hiccup, perhaps, inside that mom.
His heart started beating there,
his spine formed, his eyes rounded.
Seventy-five years ago
he was as vulnerable
as another mom’s child
supine on the street
with a knee
on his neck.
Tommy Guns
She says of the Portland protesters—police
should take tommy guns and shoot ‘em all.
She pushes back in her chair,
where we physical distance on the porch:
that would take care of things!
She sips her wine and nods.
Well, I say, attempting calm, that wouldn’t
take care of things—
it would cause more troubles.
When she leaves, I can’t get those
tommy guns out of my head.
I want to see what makes
this gutsy generous woman
talk of tommy guns,
peer into her bluster.
I sit there, seeing her—
newly eighty, her TV, omnipresent,
cameras rolling on human rivers roiling,
alone with her ailing dog, her retirement
stash lost by investment scam.
Meanwhile coronavirus roams the world
targeting people of her age.
Escalation everywhere it seems,
fingers reaching past her locked door
reaching her, snapping, snapping—
goddam, make it stop!
as if tommy guns
could do that for her
