The Streets
By Rick Barot
When he came back from the streets he said
that everyone had worn masks, the stores
had all been boarded up, and the cops had
their gear and their shields, so that everything
was muffled while also terrible, terrifying.
He saw a woman, an older white woman,
get shoved down and she stayed down, curled
up, until she was helped. Because I was sick
and couldn’t go there, I had the luxury
of seeing the woman as an image, a seashell
or an ampersand on the ground, though I didn’t
tell him this. He saw the tents people lived in
by the park get torched, and I could smell
on him what he had seen. There were people
with bullhorns you couldn’t really hear.
There was singing along with the chanting
of all the names of those who were murdered.
He said it didn’t matter what kind of day
it was but it was ironic that it was a beautiful
summer day, the sky a swimming pool.
He lost the two friends he had gone with.
Though they’d told each other to meet in front
of the public library if they got separated,
the crowd had gotten thick and angry there.
At the crowd’s edges were people selling
T-shirts, books, and water, like the commerce
that sprung up at the edges of battlefields.
But it wasn’t a war, he said, because he
could walk away from it and take the bus
back home. I thought of him looking like a boy,
looking out the window, the tilt of late sun
a hand smoothing a tablecloth. I thought
of the bus the way I thought of poems, that it
was a civic space and a lyric space at once.
I knew not to say any more about what
I was only imagining. He turned and went
to the other room, to wash his hands and face.
