At sunup, the yard rakes assembled
into ranks and files upon the common,
their rusting tines combed back, slickened
with dew. Here, they would harden a front
against the encroach of the leaf blowers
and riding mowers, hickory bodies stiff
in the democratic wind. Schoolkids
in uniform blues peered through windows
of their ugly yellow transports, the garages
gaping open, stuffed with croquet mallets,
red metal gas cannisters, and hyper–realistic
Christmas statuary, a pint of Cutty Sark
embedded deep undercover in the box
of lawn darts beside the magi. A reveille
of zzaaaaas and zzooooos revved up across
the hashtag architecture of suburbia.
If You’re Not Angry, You’re Not Paying
Attention, hollered a passing tote bag.
If you want peace, work for justice, grumbled
the bumper of a Cherokee. FOUR MORE
YEARS, chanted the placard leading a contrail
of mentholated smoke past the VFW.
From the courthouse portico, you could see
a leaf tug its static line free of a Dutch elm,
its jagged brown descent caught in the twitchy
jurisdiction of a red–light camera.
Thus began its hopeful mission to the surface.
The others would follow.
She’d wearied of the gruff interrogations
and pithy rejoinders, had answered twice
every dick combing the manor,
but she twiddled a last hexahedron of ice
watering the gin in her Life’s a Beach coffee mug.
Down cellar, a mild–mannered
roach checked into a homicidal motel.
Everyone she’d ever known had settled
in for an evening of Netflix and edibles,
and earthquakes were more common
in the county that year than sex,
so she took hold of the captain’s nape
as if it were a candlestick telephone,
pulled his hardboiled ear in close,
and murmured, Because
nobody hates a dead supply–side
macroeconomist lying like a shadow
on a rug in the leather and varnished interior
of his Victorian study.