Brenda Hillman

Notes outside West County Detention Center

 

The collective body sends out magnetized
                   curved energy to the west,      it snags in the teeth
of the field daisies & on the hemlock
 
                                      Socrates maybe ate,
                   it circles to where some stand in useless protest
under windows where the immigrants are locked
 
                   & can’t hear.             Grinding smoke from
       the refineries.
                                      On Fridays gray is slower.
 
Some actions rule out rest, money for jobs or being dead
& there is mostly little news of danger here.
A white moth
 
drops to the asphalt, carries the suffering on two
                   of its gray
                   specks. No sign of life from the jail.
 
                                                         What do we mean, sign of life.
              There is some dust among us from before
     the sun was made, it fell in great slashes
 
seen by first peoples here, we place these slashes
on the instrument of time///    The sheriff’s men were
              later immigrants, they touch their stupid guns,
 
                     they become magnetized
with their elbows in 7s. Some hate their jobs, some like
        policing for the state. If love were kept
 
from hurt it might bend metal. The families
        stand under the overhang while the perhaps
200 are inside for something like a traffic ticket.
 
ICE gave Sheriff Livingston money for each prisoner.
By the time this poem is revised he ends the contract,
                  The protests have become expensive for the county
 
  but too late, for, though i don’t believe
              in hell        i have placed the Sheriff’s non-remorseful
soul in a circle of non-souls,
 
Dante would know what to call them,    there is spare
      ice far down in his hell of course
                      but in my terza non-rima        i will
 
simply lock    the Sheriff’s   non-remorseful soul in
     @@@ signs   &    burning ampersands &&&&
             where it can circle
 
in fumes till he apologizes.            The immigrants will be
         moved to Stockton or Nevada, profits will rise
                                                          & as i told Alan
 
it’s not that protests are useless, it’s that
                   some usefulness is too American.
        In tract homes nearby,     black, brown & white
 
children lower their heads over video games.
       By the time this is revised the immigrants
have been moved
 
to what knows where & families
           don’t know where they’ve gone.    That’s why we call
                      some evil the non-soul.           Centuries pass,
 
invasive but non-imperialist species    are heaped
                   in the field,              useless magnetized
energy snags                in the teeth of the daisies—