What’s your favorite animal?
I asked a four-year-old girl
and she said, a baby
deer.
The last time I saw Baltimore Jack
he called my attention to the people sitting at the next
table:
They biked here, they
got the gear, the helmets, the sweat
and they’re not even
talking to each other, he yelled,
they’re just looking
at their cell phones. They can’t stand each other!
What is this? Calm
down, Jack, I said,
can’t you see we’re trying to do business? Last night I saw
a teenage moose on the highway,
all legs and slender tripping, through the mountains,
we drove for hours listening to 90’s music
eating bags of candy and potato chips.
Baltimore Jack is dead.
I read his obit while watching a video where Ana, topless
linked arms with other topless girls
black letters slick on their bodies/ no more indigenous
genocide—
is that a moose on the highway? Don’t hit the moose.
Behind Ana there’s a row of riot police//a plastic shield at
her back
just before the canister of teargas explodes
and you can’t see the women anymore
and you know they can’t breathe.
The moose isn’t fully-grown.
She wobbles on her big, new legs.
Someone you love is being choked by the police tonight,
and Baltimore Jack is dead, which is to say, he is still
moving
and the problem with forgetful medicine
is that when it stops working, you have to stop the car.
And it’s no good comparing him to Jesus. Look what happened
to Jesus.