when the big man wins
you will feel small, for a minute
you will shrink down in the patchwork sofa count your toes and your 87 dollars think about insurance premiums this year and the clown confetti future on tv
you will marvel you made jokes at this before when it was only dirty water passing through the news, just piss to flush away with one-ply paper, flush, forgot
you will repent the signs of aunts and preachers, back-home teachers posting treatises at 3 a.m. for "causes" you assumed were Don Quixote "causes" pitiful and trenchant, marching sideways, so you thoughtÂ
while all along they tilted to your door
you will feel large, and too large like an insect sting puffed out all hot and red and weeping from the middle
you will jostle at a sidelong tweet a sticker on a red lapel
a stare that rests too heavy on your headscarf makes you wish you could dissolve or start to heal a little, please
but that comes after, you find quickly– you can't bleed and walk away– first the 'please and thank you kindly' for the privilege of having such an awful lot of say in this great fuck-ballet of leering and dismissing bloody children in Aleppo and Chicago fallen dancers in Orlando, women walking home from work all out of place, and still no quarter slated to accept them, not today, and not tomorrow
and that's why, my love, you grow out of your smallness and your fevered swelling too and take the shitstorm by its tail and don't let go you follow ugly conversations to split ends you open doors to places you don't want to go you walk on through you keep your feet you get back up
you give the big man his show
















