It was January. One only observed
Silence and held up binoculars
Seeing how any starlings at an inaugural look
A murmuration, our anarchist rather
Distrusted the interval in at
At this, at needling times like this when
Such as with chamoix and columnar architecture
There’s carryover from the Continent
One interrogation, the attempter took a hundred
Quid pro quos before even confessing
What his tattoos meant
They were nothing as archaic as cimarron or chinook
The keystones of which we already knew
Ibex and sirocco were legends
But what else he could have done with
A cutting stylus except rut
His way out of the question
We were eventually let in on
How his plans had been to shoulder
The wait and have
Some steely reserve, knowing that one’s
Chances would improve in the improv
Of relocating to Buffalo, which they did
And the shots at the president
Who happened to be attending the very convention
X-rays were initially exhibited at
First grazed then went through
The stomach, pancreas, and kidney
Before lodging in the muscles of his back
The president whispered to his secretary, George Cortelyou
“My wife, Cortelyou, be careful how
You tell her, oh be careful
During this whispering, the anarchist would have fired
Again, he said, but was struck by a bystander and then
Subdued by the enraged crowd
At which point, the wounded
President called out “Boys
Don’t let them hurt him
One imagines because he thought he would make it
But his doctors didn’t trust the safety of the machines
Preferring to dig by the light properly
Arranged pans recurved into the room
From down the hallway, up the stairs
And outside where the sun was
By all accounts and records, startling
Jeff Downey is from the panhandle of Nebraska but currently lives in Amherst, MA, where he co-edits the newly-founded Microfilme Magazine. His poems have appeared in Handsome, RealPoetik, and Octopus.