Overread at Table 3: Poem "Five Dead Senses"

Five Dead Senses

Tiny fingers curl around the chain link
of the fence, or touch the
tactile pockmarks of the cement
blocks;

dirty faces
streaked with tears, the toddler
cries under the floodlamp against the
Border Patrol van
idling night in the desert.

The taste of blood and earth
on our tongues, which
mutely scream
against the walls of an Empire
that does not know
that it is already dead.

The smell of death is here,
all around us, seeping
from our touchscreens
while we, zombie-eyed and
mumblesputtering, scroll
endlessly for the ever-vanishing
uptick spark of that last
dopamine hit …

And we are deaf
from the thunder
of God’s silence.



MR
2020-0203