Tuesday, May 23, 2017

CONTRAPUNTAL

In the midday
wind, roadside litter crescendoing,
fluttering

like so many
white
and pink and gray

devil-may-
care songbirds,
giddy with their freedom;

making those fraught,
jagged,
haphazard loops

of hotly competing
amateur soloists—
and mocking, necessarily,

their huge hostage rows
of passengers
sitting

hunched over
gunmetal steering
wheels,

whispering
over and over—some
very precise

lunch orders
to help them remember
they're

not being paid—
to compose any
questions.