lacking courage to navigate
grocery parking lot
brussels sprouts in timid
mouths Tuesday communion
daily planner full
despot errand days
eternal Excel document
etches left on toaster
a cry for escape
or for excavations
sitting in weather
awaiting drunkenness
and carriage rides
through the museum
of finishing school
trophy cases
holding cold coffee
of vanished compatriot
lost on a bus
a birth place
on fire
I realize she is a copy
while the coffee pools on the table.
The record skips
I realize she is a copy.
The scraps migrate across the plate.
She refuses is speak
the pen hovers above the table.
So began the overzealous re-enactments
of the Battle of Waterloo
in front of her apartment
complex; where no one
could say, this is fake blood,
that is real blood
when the police arrive.
I try to sleep under her doormat.
I dismantle the robot
I built out of her computer
and trinkets from her garbage.
I stopped believing
its I love you when
it tucks me in at night
possibly hallucinating
the policeman’s gun
pointed at my head.
Mike Wall's tale is the epic tale of child sold into slavery who grows into a man who seeks revenge against the warlord who massacred his tribe.