By Karen Pittelman
If I would mass
instead of ache,
assemble not erode,
If this granular body, its
weak granular needs
could heat to hard crack,
from the sugar
mold a rough little skull,
If I gave what
I was meant to keep,
hoarded what I
never should have had,
If I made my garden
too close to the factory,
hauled a dark plant from the earth
that we could never eat,
its tap root still trembling
with dirt, sun glint in
its poison and silica,
If there is a point when a crowd
finds its own physics,
its own eddies and
unbearable tides,
If we have not clearly marked
the means of egress,
If we have become fluid,
If we have forgotten
even the fact
of the door.
