Fluid Ounces
"Catherine Daniels called 911 when she couldn’t persuade her son, Lavall Hall, a 25-year-old black man, to come in out of the cold early one morning in February. A diagnosed schizophrenic who stood 5-foot-4 and weighed barely 120 pounds, Hall was wearing boxer shorts and an undershirt and waving a broomstick when police arrived. They tried to stun him with a Taser gun and then shot him.... Hours after her son was killed, Daniels said, officers investigating the shooting dropped off a six-pack of Coca- Cola.”
— Kimberly Kindy, "Fatal police shootings in 2015 approaching 400 nationwide," Washington Post (May 30, 2015)
After he wouldn't come in to get warm clothes on;
After his mom noticed he must not have taken his meds; After she realized she wasn't getting through to him; She called 911 for help.
Ghosts gathered and transcribed the call —
Ghosts felt electrons carry voices through the wires —
Ghosts grew excited, wavered, quivered beneath her message, wiggling her words
When she told what was happening, feeding on her panic in ecstasy —
After she ended the call and told him the police were coming;
After he picked up a broom handle and whistled it in air;
After the red-flashing cars unloaded their small teams of problem solvers;
Lavall Hall joined the ghosts.
Ghosts gathered in the wisps at the end of the barrel —
Ghosts danced through the tendrils of steam from his mouth —
Ghosts frisked and fed and danced on their heads in the runnels the rivulets
The black & red effervescence rolling to the sea leaving Lavall empty red & white —
(Inside me would fit nearly three times he
Inside of me three little Lavalls
Inside of me the fears and totems of three of he
Bury them beside the red broom handle in an oversized white coffin)
After the measuring men arrived in their white coats;
After they placed yellow cards with black numbers;
After they took photos and labeled everything in plastic bags;
The last detective left a six pack of Coke on his mom’s porch
[Enter Lieutenant, in uniform with miter, leading twenty officers holding pens and memo books:]
[Lieutenant, chanting:]
Oh sacred red cans
Oh sacred silver logo
Oh effervescent black brew
[Lieutenant nods to officers, who begin copying into their memo books:]
The officers secured you in plastic flex cuffs.
At time and place of occurrence they did observe
The bitter visionary drink.
Secret medicine was vouchered for analysis
At the holy hidden labs.
[Lieutenant raises his right hand and gazes upward; officers go to one knee with heads bowed:]
We pray to you now:
Accept our sacrifice of one dollar and ninety eight cents a six pack
And forgive our sins for two point eight cents per fluid ounce.
This statement done and executed under penalty of perjury In this the year of our Lord 2015.
[All:]
Amen.
[All exit. Curtain.]
Parsed
The sunny work of clever fingers is done.
Inside this basket you can find a bird.
The cops would love to see your face, to stun
Your goddamn guts and plug your empty word.
In secret holes, in moments torn, absurd
Precaution put its hands inside your pants.
It scoops for dirt in there, as if a turd
Would bring about some long-foreseen advance.
But cameras placed inside intestines glance
At nothing, after all -- just walls of skin.
As microphones pick up our senseless rants,
Grave terror hides among our petty sins.
When all our deeds are gathered in one place,
We'll all be mannequins stuffed full of tapes.
A Unified Theory
Some other dark head dreams within
mine with a mind as wide as the sky
and as speckled with freckles of white light.
What love is felt here in gravity’s dent
where the matter in scraps
spins and swirls? Look for a tear
in the world that isn’t there,
leading into tighter stars.
What love? Why do southward motes
slowly loop in waves, quaver, subscribe to an orbit?
What dust slithers, how clumps to human
form? The quickening glisten of carbon, the phosphorescent
gloaming...what machine drives it?
Love, I say, but might also say muse, magnet,
accidental amino acid, wandering seed, sly
miracle on the sea’s edge.
What else there is
cannot be said
for certain...
multiples contain me.
Dan Bodah is an attorney and poet. His chapbook Eyes & Roots was published in 2014 by Many Moons Press and poems have appeared in Blueline, Adirondac, Modern Haiku, and Ghost City Review. Bodah hosts a reading series at KGB Bar in New York City featuring writers from the staff of freeform radio station WFMU, where he produces a Monday night radio show, Vocal Fry, featuring music with extended vocal techniques such as yodeling, throatsinging, beatboxing, eefing, etc. Find him on Twitter: @vocalfrier & @wfmulit.