Susan Briante is the author of Pioneers in the Study of Motion (Ahsahta Press 2007) and Utopia Minus (Ahsahta Press 2011). Recent poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Court Green, and POOL.
END OF ANOTHER CREATURE
Starlings in the magnolia tree crackle, static, lightning; a helicopter floats overhead. Harvest brings dove-hunting season, a great migration. For six days I watch monarch butterflies scatter across the Metroplex, dream their carcasses onto the highway, dream black beetles biting my fingers in your clasped hands. I feel a pilot light at the back of my throat, while the helicopter groans a few blocks deeper down Ross Avenue. And the magnolia tree falls silent, and the season concludes.
The Market migrates; the Market scatters across the Metroplex.
The Market dreams my carcass onto the highway, groans
a few blocks deeper into my neighborhood.
In the liquidity of late afternoon sun, a truck on the avenue clips branches from elms. What policy might we bring forth on our front-yard folding table? Deposit insurance? The return of Glass Steagall? Pull over. Price what you see. Privatize this rush-hour traffic. Look disappointed. The helicopter answers pulse, pulse, pulse. These fences make a triangle, a shed of mostly shadow behind the boxwoods and quiet where someone left chemicals.