A Website of the Radical Imagination
Alison Stone Immigrants, artists, tycoons seek New York.
Bloodstains from aborted dreams streak New York.
To friends from elsewhere, even the name awes.
Their eyes widen when I speak of New York.
Fickle city, we moth-fly toward your light.
You bless the rich, feed on the weak. New York
(for B.)
Secrets that lips hold back, the body shows.
Be gone, Sun. In moonlight, the body glows.
Rittenhouse sobs he shot in self-defense.
Entry wound in the back, the body knows
Teacher back home, maid in America.
He sold tusks and jade in America.
Skipping down childhood’s street in a dream.
Two teams of angels compete in a dream.
Doing Yoga, I Think About Simone Biles And My Nonbinary Child
Wrists bound with satin cords, they wed in June.
Till death or an affair, he said in June.
Moon-fuelled, she keeps each man a month, shows her
faces to Caleb in May, Ted in June.
Windows open. Snowdrops up. Arms bare. Spring!
She wants her hands in dirt. No armchair spring.
Drunks drive down streets where kids play. Someone dies.
A white boy has a bad day. Someone dies.
Words aren’t swords, or bombs,
gunpowder, guns, dragons.
Not a scaffold with a waiting noose.
Words aren’t religion, airplanes,
torn-out panic buttons,
flagpoles or fire extinguishers.
Not a zip tie. Not a wick.
Just the flame.
Locked down with family, I’m blessed with touch.
People-heavy days, pets give the best touch.
Five hundred forty seconds.
Time in which an athlete
Can run a mile and a half.
A couple can have rushed,
Workday-morning sex.
A teacher can teach about the stars.
A killer can keep his knee
On the neck of a man.
Hands scrubbed till they bleed.
School replaced with videos.
Carts crammed with toilet paper and guns.
