From Trading Riffs to Slay Monsters

Yusef Komunyakaa and Laren McClung | 115 I know patterns of lockdown & migration— how a storm or germ could drive us into a cellar or march us out toward fertile soil. How a bat in the market can transform the shape of the future or cause us to take three steps back & cover our faces with masks I dreamt in a dream. Yes, I know we were taught to believe our machines could control meat & sugar. I am sorry, but I don’t wish to rush to the fire in the heart of the thing, drama, or deed. I’m ready to leave the 1890s, & find myself at the door of Ed’s Museum. But it is closed because of a slow lockdown in America, & we’re governed by wishful thinking, voodoo economics & bankruptcy while talking about alphabet soup. poetry From Trading Riffs to Slay Monsters Yusef Komunyakaa and Laren McClung 116 | Yusef Komunyakaa and Laren McClung You’ll find a garden mouse with flowers, & a pig buried in a pot of dirt at the step, but that’s nothing like the collection of everyday things piled up in the heart & mind. I was just thinking how one man’s treasures show the shortcomings of a lifetime of people hoarding iconic junk—false gods & playthings. For years I’d see this guy pushing two shopping carts along the city streets. He’d take one up the block— walk back & grab the other one— both piled high with busted clocks, broken gadgets, bottles, & toys. Sometimes the poor work hard pushing a round stone uphill, the first to die of Covid-­ 19. I’d say take a deep breath, but we all know there’s no fresh air at a time like this. My heart breaks in the middle of the night, when I’m up arranging letters to leave behind in the event things don’t go as planned. I know it matters little what we leave, but since my circadian rhythms are off, I must busy my hands. Yusef Komunyakaa and Laren McClung | 117 I worked wintertime with Father H (forbidden to come within a half mile of Fort Carson & the Air Force Academy) & those other volunteers at the soup kitchen where we’d serve food plucked from Safeway dumpsters at midnight, before they poured bleach on the day-­ old bread & unspoiled fruit & vegetables under godly moonlight. Look, my great-­ uncle wore a heavy coat in late August & wandered avenues or rocked himself to sleep on city benches. Sometimes a knock at the door meant he hadn’t eaten for days. He carried a duffel bag with a change of clothes & his drumsticks & he’d beat triplets on a bucket in the yard. Did he first know hunger in the year he marched? ...