Glass
Morally no I don't
Star the important
Bits I don't hold
Onto the empty
Digital protests of
Friends and former
Lovers but I've got
A lot to lose their
Anger all sudden
Where was it before
My white friends
Don't feel bad about
It turn your burning
Glass to the sun
It can be lethal in
This climate but it
Already was lethal
For people like me
Inner Rose and Outer Rose
Me, I’ve got anger,
my insides a roiling
cloud of bones, a relic
that still inexplicably
works. Your name a
divine thumb and
doom light, my teeth
ground down to neck.
My anger is not specific,
always, I try not to be
object of gawker's block.
A celebrity embraces
a pain I run from and I
can’t understand it. My
anger, it’s an engine all
gummed up. I breathe
in its bubbled mess but
it doesn’t stick to my lungs
like before, it slowly peels
away like noodles test-flicked
at a kitchen cupboard.
Humor is a cure, sure, the
extra clown in the car
that causes them all
to suffocate horribly. Anger,
I would like to break
something expensive,
something irreplaceable, but
I cannot afford that kind
of anger. I came across
a dead dog that looked like
it was sleeping. I brought
it water and nothing happened,
raw meat, the same.
Glenn Shaheen is the author of the poetry collections Predatory (U Pitt Press, 2011), and Energy Corridor (U Pitt Press, 2016); the flash fiction chapbook Unchecked Savagery (Ricochet Editions, 2013); and the flash fiction collection Carnivalia (Gold Wake, 2018).