QUIETLY WAITING FOR MY ANGEL TO EMERGE, MOTH-LIKE, FROM HER BOX

Gabrielle Octavia Rucker

 

I should be a better driver, a wiser architect than this.
Three turns at the helm of my kaleidoscope & the body pivots to the weather it rides. 

I might forget the altitude’s lack, might wonder the math attached
to the mountain side & my timing. 

(SOMEONE SCREAMS) 

Everything is mocking me. 

If I were still brave I might jump, as I remember, from the jungle gym down towards
the splintered wood chips to avoid my playtime captors. 

Now I look through windows they’ve paid for, recite numbers so I may pass through
the armed guards’ radioactive probing & on towards the ticketed drinking fountains. 

How strange to rip through helpless clouds imagining thrones clutching kings—
it’s laughable the compassion some lack and its absolute relation to the endangered state
of our environment.