On the Front Lines at the Court of Death

The courthouse "guest list" tallies poverty crimes from the revolving door of

welfare and jail. The reference weight cannot register the atomic pain of a

crater-faced parent—black moon eyes—rolling their infant through metal

detector gates past the sheriff and into the waiting room of finger-smeared

brochures in "plain English" but really in legalese curling over the plexiglass

stands among all the spoils of purgatory on paper—lifetimes in court dockets

and the walls whispering decades of transcripts and on the table a newspaper

spins obituaries for NIMBYs, erasing those who failed to live. Evidence of

necropolitics as the true scale of life written in sponsored ink. Admission

to heaven's gate rigged for kings and sycophants. No Judge can weigh a heart

pulled from the deepest pit of the living. When my heart is weighed of what

it witnesses, it will be feather light. Squeezed of its muscle, like a fist of air

from where I will blow a kiss for all those squeezed out of existence.

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Originally published in Fire from the Heart 2024: Winners of the Muriel's Journey Poetry Prize