Elegy for the Police State
This week in the PEN Poetry Series, PEN America features a poem by Joshua Bennett.
Elegy for the Police State
What I imagined first were pruning hooks.
Something biblical, agrarian, a new use
for metal once good for little
more than tearing the air
from a human body. Then, a gesture
towards the speculative: improbable,
overdue machines, teleportation
pads & 12-speed hover-bikes,
lightsabers that can’t kill, but make you feel warm
& amorphous upon contact, like good
ramen, or when you find someone
else’s money on the floor.
The exercise grew unwieldy,
so I gave my energies over
to more practical matters.
Who to call when you get robbed
or hit with a bat. Who else to feed the dogs
of entropy & personal choice, the price
we pay to live decent, which
is to say, far from the stench
of the dead & the dying interlocked, unintelligible
with all that gold in their mouths.
Here’s a story: once, freshly cast
by my old man to the hotel room wall,
throat now full of my own, unoriginal
blood, I knew I needed my father
dead, assumed the quickest route
would be to call the law. 12 years old
& already this kind of contract killer,
I took my cue from scenes
at school, black wands buzzing
before each child, marking us
ready for class or cuffs, no middle
ground to be found really, what I have since
heard called a pipeline more of a smooth
continuum from hold to hold, everywhere
batons & threats of premature interment, everywhere
taupe walls like the ones in jail & someone’s grandbaby
pummeled raw.
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