In my neighbor’s yard,
red poppies.
Scrape a bagel, they say, and you
can grow some flowers.
On the next table over in the cafe,
bagels dotted with black.
Eat a bagel, they say, and you may
fail a test for opioids.
You can’t escape
the prevalence
of such things.
My little hometown
has both a bagel place and
overdoses. They sell
cream cheese and Narcan
in the strip mall.
In Afghanistan,
there are fields of poppies.
In the US,
there are fields of dead
killed around and by
the poppies.
Read the fine print.
You’ll see
I’m right. Policy
and breakfast and
poppies, lovely
and filling and deadly,
side by side to greet us
in the morning light. We need
so many drugs
to get through to the next day.
