This empty lot is called
Mexican Corner.
No one’s really sure why.

The name doesn’t show
on any map. Only the locals
say it. They all say it.

Corner of Elm
and Main. Used to be
a house here

but the brick-crumb
ground that was beneath
is all that’s left. A little scorched,

concrete dusted.
A messy spot on the edge
of what used to be downtown. 

Maybe there was a Mexican
there once? Living there,
happy there? There’s not one there

now, nor is there one
for miles around. All we’ve got
is the name, the earth

soiled with erasure,
and a lot of folks who shrug
when asked about history. 

This room you are in
was intentionally built
as a circle on a turntable
with walls too high
to see what else is out there

so you barely bother to try and see
if they told you the truth,
since they have told you
for your whole life
that this room you are in
is the envy of the world;

it’s so dangerous out there;
everybody wants in
and here you are, allegedly
safe, clinging with your back
to the wall. 

Whether you believe the danger
will break in from the right or the left
you will act the fool 
running the other way
but you cannot run
on a swirling floor and you will
fall to the center. There’s a whole heap of people
just like you down there 
in the middle, clawing to get back
to the walls that are growing higher 
by the minute.

You suddenly realize
you are in a vessel being shaped
on a potter’s wheel.
Hands somewhere are doing the work
of raising the walls as you spin.
The opening at the top narrows
and less and less light enters.

You are hoping to live through 
the firing to come
long enough to see the flowers
this was made to hold
when you realize that if you do
get that far, with those flowers
will come your drowning
as you were never meant to be
anything but food
to sustain someone else’s beauty.

Start 
pointing fingers

Stop saying
how is this is happening here

Start saying 
this is being done here

Stop saying
this is being done here

Start saying
they are doing this here

Start
pointing fingers

directly
at those who do

Start recalling
this is not the first time

Stop saying
how is this is happening here

Start saying 
for some this is how it’s always been

Stop
wringing your hands

Stop pretending any of this
is new or out of character

Stop 
gesturing at old paper

Start
reading old paper

Start
pointing at old paper

Stop
saying “But…but…” when you do

Start
pointing fingers

Stop
ignoring your mirror

It’s a neighbor with a bad car
parked on the street
without plates, the cops
hovering around then having it towed.
It’s the couple screaming at 
each other on the sidewalk and 
one of them tears a rock out of your wall, 
raising it overhead, and now
it’s your concern. Did they screw up
the succulents that grow there,
the hen and chicks? You yell down from
the bedroom window to put it back.
That breaks the anger spell.
They leave after tossing the rock
onto the top of the wall.
You will replace it later
now that all is well and after
the tow truck leaves with the bad car?
It’s almost as suburban out here as it is back home
where high school friends live who say
“the city is a cesspool” and trot around
boastfully shaking their heads at me 
from their beautiful yards 
where the hen and chicks grow from holes
artfully cut into the sides of barrels 
transformed into planters they bought
at the hardware store down the street
from the place where that guy 
stabbed another guy in the back of the head
at a lazy evening barbecue a couple of years ago,
an isolated incident among isolated people,
insulated people who choose to turn away. 
To those high school friends I say:
welcome to the cesspool
where I see my shit and name it
while you hide yours.
In the longest of long runs
it all smells the same. 
It all spills out eventually
just like those tough little plants do when they 
bloom, long translucent stems and flowers
drooping out of barrel holes and stonewall cracks,
trying to make the best
of wherever they find themselves.

There are very few clues to find
when exploring how
he became this narrow. 

His permanent record
barely explains anything
as no one ever felt much need

to put notes in there.
His employment file
describes his mild job history,

annual satisfactory reviews,
merely adequate
bumps in pay year upon year. 

Tax returns tell nothing
and there’s nothing of note
in the newspapers of record. 

So how he got to
hollering about the “woke mob”
that’s killing him, is a puzzle

when there’s no sign of damage
from anyone in his history. 
It all looks pretty clean.

Except for the bullshit 
on his tongue, he could be anyone.
That may be the problem: perhaps

he thought he should be exalted
for being so much like 
what he’d been told he should be

that when being ordinary and 
bland and safe-pale was not enough
by itself to make him king,

he drew a sword on his face
and stepped up and out screaming 
for his kingdom.

He makes it up
as he marches along
behind the bulls, feeding.