Kayla Vargas
Abolitionist Confessions
Freedom does not exist
In a land where
We deny trans kids the right
To say who they are
To claim their own names
Make decisions about their bodies.
One nation, under violence
Predicated by genocide
Functioning exactly as intended.
Gun violence is not the exception
To the rule.
Death by Gun
Built the bones of this house.
Dotty Armstrong
He Used to Be a Wild Man
Bragging, boasting, ever-talking,
his currency was
skirmishes and vendettas,
somewhat of a looker
but not quite. Today, at 75,
his legs are stretched out on a recliner
the way he used to press
the gas pedal down hard on his old car.
He loved the way its noise seemed to blast
the dust off the buildings. That car
a wreck on the outside but everything inside
tuned and new and shiny
by his own hands. He had talent
but he never got it up and running
like some people do. Blunts
and bottles called to him
louder, than day after day
of hard work.
Then he says, “The way I’ve lived
I know I’m lucky
to have an old mobile home to live in
a car that mostly runs,
a patch to grow weed.”
In the distance the whistle of a train.
He says “There is nothing like a train whistle,
the way it sings to you from far away,
a noise you don’t have to worry about,
like a lullaby when you are safe at home.
When I hear the tune of the Empire Builder
I know I am never alone”.
For the rest of the day
I think about
how often people surprise me.
Leon Petty
To Fall
Death is the existential return
to our nothing and our nothingness
exiting raw
between meaning
and absurdity
the ebbing sob
the rumbling moment
when we let go of all our tears
A river flowing backwards
transfigured, electrified
peculiar
at odds
elsewhere
out of screams
fleshy wrong
Death the original sin
lopes in serving the main course
teetering on the trays
of grander candid spirits
edifying their world