The Outraged (& other poems)

by Evelyn F. Katz

The outraged nip
at words distractors shoot
like rubber bullets into crowds.
The outraged rally
to save confederate statues
but wash away blood mapping
our country’s history.
The outraged chokehold
street peddlers,
Plow into crowds
Detonate teargas bombs
Impose curfews
Retreat to their bunkers
and watch on their flatscreens
as the country burns.

In the Broken

My beauty reveals itself in my broken
skin,

scalpeled and excavated
restitched
sunken
pink.

Under a lover’s wandering finger
the dip of flesh

disfigured.

I let the sun lick
My beauty broken
And when my lover asks,
I tell him
It is my point of light.

Election Day

A man I may already love
Casts his ballot on the other side of town
And I, my body still lingering an hour ahead of itself
Number 8 on line at 5.
We all
Masks in the dark, waiting to cast our right to complain.
Then to Lowes where I buy paint
The man I have never loved right will spread across my walls.
All before 8
When I meet on screen
The man I may already love
My I Voted sticker affixed to my forehead
And his
Still pressed against its back liner
Waiting to see if it all really counted.