passages from "Parrot Eyes Lust"
for Elliot Helfer
Do potatoes suffer?
*****
Angela Davis’s innocence
always was inscribed
absolutely
by the fact that
the guns
registered in her name
Jonathan Jackson had stolen
from the Che-Lumumba Club safe house
Still that concept—
the Che-Lumumba Club safe house—
is itself worthy
of further exploration
Sentences
dangling in midair
Davis
as an undergraduate
studied at the Sorbonne
I got a job
with Pacific Gas & Electric
******
Who one runs into
in this
resolutely Republican
county when
reporting
for jury duty
For five years
they’ve nursed this grief
bitterness, rage
the death of their daughter
just two days old
the beautiful but
beleaguered defendant
the crap cafeteria
that in theory stops serving
half an hour
before the judge
releases the panel for lunch
