The Tribe Has Gone Awry

The Tribe Has Gone Awry

“What year is it?” the woman wonders aloud
hobbling along a sidewalk downtown
holding her hand out as if
she expects the answer in rubies.
 
I place a ceramic dove from my coat pocket
into her palm.
Snow sticks in our hair
making us sisters in weather.

She walks away murmuring, “This dove has forgotten
how to fly. Someone has glued his wings
to his sides. How awful.”

And how awful for the Tribe members left
wandering this city.
They have all glued their wings
to their sides in sad defiance
so they wobble aimlessly about town
with a protracted lean
getting in the way of pigeons
who cope much more efficiently
with this thing.

The Tribe, in its madness, developed
apathy cauterized with drugs and some snapping.
It denotes the color of maple syrup.
It sounds like the end of a scream.

“We’re tired,” she says. “We’re so tired under the beams.”
And she picks at the dove’s white ceramic Es
where functional wings would better be.
Snow piles on her crown.
She makes a salt pillar standing now
in front of the boarded Saenger
as sodium bulbs pool light around her bandaged feet
with pops and hisses.
 
Only pieces remain of our tents.
Doctors only have to say they are doctors
and paint their faces white.
Everything is blown open and stretched out
and no one can find where they used to live
when buildings, homes and humans are skewed, hidden or just
gone.

 - KG