by Royal Rhodes
These stories almost escaped
from order into dizzying chaos,
with linear cartoon-like panels
in the rows of tenement floors,
letting us glimpse the dramas
inside, without subtitles to read.
The lens took in the flaking paint,
acid-yellow wall-paper strips,
and a woman gazing out at us,
squinting through a bruised eye.
The action moved along from here
to there, inventing a melodrama
of gunshots and alley dumpsters
But we also had seen in the street
the image from a pin-hole camera
a homeless man had documented
from when he was living rough
a block from the stately capitol
where legislators reiterated claims
that no veterans ever slept on grates.
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