POWDERHORN
2017
Ed Bok Lee
Cowbell wind chimes clang
In this quiet pocket of the city.
Lesbians love living here.
Brutalized philosophers
Of color. Pit bull-walkers. Exiles.
Immigrants. Jugglers. Where
Grizzly hippies spill coffee
Over the Crisis of Capitalism,
Apiary priests pray to their bees, and hydra-
Headed emcees slowly go gray.
Kingdom of nightshade, weeping
Willow and concrete. City
Lake cosmos of nighttime
Stars wheeling a young
Boy’s trowel in a front yard carrot patch
Sunday mornings between tattoo-faced parents
On their hands and knees, weeding.
Toddler to the knowledge
That the world redesigned by yet another
Solar system in another galaxy begins
With each Glock’s shot in the distance. Sirens
Sing their far syllables of sin and lament. Crack, smack, and sex
Workers shuffling subzero steps at the perimeter like puff-
Hooded sentinels, all winter into spring’s
Newest chicks, pecking, clucking
Through broken vodka bottles and dandelions.
Midwest, Midtown
Contiguity of the future and the past;
Part metropolis,
Part grassland.
Sunday futbol in Somali-slurred Spanish,
Pagan puppet street parade each May,
And Mike Hoyt’s tri-ped portable karaoke
Projecting lyrics on a Greenway underpass
For punks, bankers, activists, nurses—anyone
On a summer Saturday night who brakes and croons
Before biking on. Meanwhile,
Lowriders shimmy. Native teens
In saggy pants glare or clown
By the monkey bars. Cops like orcas
Troll. And brothers brawl
With chain mail, ballet and basketball.
Once upon a time, the world longed
For milk, so the sun touched its aching tusks
To the moon’s boiling door
To borrow a little soil, a little cloud,
Until old worms tunneled into new bones.
Meanwhile, the deer-dreaming wind spreads seeds
And ashes over the earth. Snow
Soon joined in. Mulberry
Wine inside larks. All sky art. Pond-
Stewed ions. Humans. Meditation. Poetry. Shit,
I almost forgot—Chonny’s Bhangra Basement Barbeque
Each Friday at sunset
For anyone who wants to get down
And churn
Their own color across this canvas.