The Night Alton Sterling Died

It’s 10:20 Houston time, moldy Wednesday night,

not yet a week before Bastille Day, as people
recover from long weekends, shop and recoup
losses, the year 2016, crowds in here

at the Wal-mart off 45 South and Wayside

picking up more cat food and an odd light bulb

that’s been out from the desk reading lamp

nearly a month.

   I buy brightly colored file folders

and a sketchbook diary because I want to leave

an organized impression of the world I see. I order
a burger and fill a cup full of sweet tea, despite it
being late and I don’t want to be awake much longer,
sugar, you understand.

                         Florida's Lake Okeechobee,

my phone tells me, threatens to spill over its levee

because they won’t release water out the damn.

Toxic algae blooms, they say, caused by the sugar

industry’s pollutants. All the same, that young senator
came to check things out, the failed presidential
candidate who couldn’t stand up to the bullies,
wouldn’t curb the paranoia, so furthered the hatred.
All these whipping-boys, all this harm. Like a lion
going his own barbaric way, Apollo tells the gods,

you choose to help Achilles, that man

without a shred of decency.

                                                My eye's bottom lid
has a cut from rubbing it too roughly, I guess, reading

in the dark. It must look like wincing to the black kid

and his mother, or the woman waiting in a wheelchair

for an ice cream with her two little girls, but I'm eying

the store detective, hand reliably to his hip, sham smile.

I reach for my breast pocket and pick the burnt

bulb I brought, to throw it away, when it drops

and everybody brakes.

Reviews

[h d e rushin]

this story envelopes me G. in it's matter-of-factness. Like passing a fender bender on the street corner
then quickly refocusing on the road when no one is badly hurt. And I agree with this approach to poetry writing. Every event happens (and is introduced for discussion) other than a man being killed on the streets of America by those empowered to protect us. A weak Rubio, an out of control sugar industry that fowls , unapologetically, the lakes and streams, even a burnt out light bulb....yet our focus is always on ourselves, our lives........our needs...our sugary wants. Yet a man was killed who left a crying son for the whole world to see....And perhaps I could easily go on with the trifle called my life if I hadn't seen that image... That image made it real. Loneliness, and uncertainty = an unfortunate future. When a young teenager cries, it's usually for a real purpose..

wk....has lauded your command of language....And I agree. Your fabulous.....dana

[W.k.kortas]

Any occasional poetry is fraught with potholes, especially for emotionally and politically charged subjects, and many if not most of those are found when one wades in to the middle of the subject both feet first. This plays around the edges, the whys and wherefores which bring about events, and where most of the answers are to be found. A virtuoso composition of judicious perspective and first-rate command of the language.