UNDER THE WHEEL

​FREDERICK POLLACK

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Shower first thing, or second after breakfast.
By tonight you can either
deny how polluted you are
or half-confess, recommitting
to redemption in the morning. Reform.
Prepare for the heat by wearing something
relaxed but age-appropriate.
Erase all emails but those
requesting more money to protest
deportations, mutilations,
his appointees; give five more bucks to Senator Warren.
Be sure your notepad, mousepad, mouse and pens
line up; your desk should be neat when They come,
a protest in itself. Whatever happens
to you, your plainly innocent hard-drive
will gather dust in storage –
oddly comforting image... In this mood
it isn’t time that has you, but space.
That recent layover in Dallas:
vast wheels of repeating commerce;
a certain look and gut.
Before you go out, if you must,
remember your catechism: I fear
the summer’s heat, the rising sea,
guns and plague, the logic of history
and half my countrymen.