Tears
through brutal force
common sense becomes
underground knowledge
credentialed cynics teach
the outcome is death
with no light
to keep their jobs
one person’s resistance shines light
on live tragedy
we are all in danger
the corporation in the desert
casts you into another desert
where water is an image of water
the periphery of the city bleached
a circle of crossbones
the libraries are closed
pot shots at our death our survival
the poets will walk out
of the circle with acrid farewells
and I in the lecture hall seats of today
have a pissy snake in my guts
and a thousand of my tears
evaporate and my blood
is too thick to draw
and my sweat is metallic pins
from the roots of my hair to
the bottom of my feet
a great gushing out
a great weeping of salt
one can claim to not understand
because it is common knowledge
which is forbidden
pierced by another hundred tears
another martyrdom that would prove useless
if I made a grab for that epic light
my immediate fate releases me
from any attempt to explain myself
I am an adolescent and this
is an unknown Rome
— for KA
I work all day like a hip priest
and at night I wander the house on the slats
that don’t creak reading the tea leaves
at the back of my skull
frequency of rose bouquets
hung stalk-first to dry
mark every sill as if to say
someone with a heart still lives here
the sound of street racing mobs come down on my calm courage
they want us to be like scientists this the rational
outcome of their experiment but I when I watch myself
with camera-eye
being massacred
my ancestral blood flies
a flock of crows upon the etched faces
of the treacherous
it is not my job to study their political violence
of which we are always before
but to write all day
with painstaking attention to each line
and how I love
the people I love
and how I hate
the revving newborn fascist
how I celebrate by releasing unforgiving word bundles
that rise into the civic sky
Stacy Szymaszek
Stacy Szymaszek is the author of five books, the latest is A Year From Today (Nightboat Books, 2018). Famous Hermits will be published in 2021 by Archway Editions. Her work was recognized by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts grants to artists award - 2019. She was the director of The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church from 2007-2018 and now is a freelance writer, teacher, and consultant.