we defeated tanks with / balled up pieces of paper, / and hurled weighty poems / at the foreheads of soldiers.

An artist catching truth / before it turns the corner into a lie / steam coming off a pot of / collard greens on Sunday morning

See the boy, standing in front of a payphone. / Picking up the receiver, dialing, hanging up. / His ankles dusty, legs, burnt brown, still tubby / like a baby’s. Shame long gone from his face, 

Mangled like to spin the chickens, / liked how they danced headless / in the dirt, unable to cluck, flapping / their wings in the tin shack