DOUBLE, DEEP FUNDED

In this damp branch
channeling mist, this ear follows
the sun in its arc, trying to sort
knotted threads of radiation
after watching an old man C knows

bleed from his gashed head because
cops shoved him to the pavement
outside city hall, most of
Buffalo Common Council
believes they are surrounded by
bots, believes, in their hearts

people are not moved in response
to Martin Gugino’s blood spreading across City Hall’s feet
and would rather re-conjure any Satan
than pluck bad apples from the holy tree
of cops in the concrete garden of
Gethsemane.

Myles Carter, who built
playgrounds, ziptied, in his words
like he was Osama, after cops
tackled him, hands up, giving

an interview to a news camera, so what
if ppls outrage is uniform and solid
like bricks and there are the cops in the morning,
unashamed, outside the courthouse
to cheer their union bros
let off the hook for cracking Gugino’s head, and
there the cops are at the lip

of the protest chanting fired
fired fired to the ex-cop
kicked off the force for trying
to stop her partner from choking
a handcuffed man fired fired fired
when one cop’s fingers

fuse, expand then the rectangular railway tie his
hand have become drag him to the
ground, his back stiffens, his two extended self
become a silver rail, another cop beside
him seizes up, drops, parallel in position

another cop hinges, downward
dog, seizes the rails of
the other cops, his rib
cage flares like a nostril
into a concavity, bright and sterile

people step in, late enough
already, Buffalo Free Rapid Transit slides off
the courthouse empty as a daydream
the kind of thing that did not happen

—

from Issue 1 of the Amenia Free Review

—

Joe Hall is a Buffalo-based writer and researcher. He was first taught poetry by Lucille Clifton, Jeffrey Coleman, and two decades of bad jobs. Buffalo Free Rapid Transit (2026) is his sequel to the critically acclaimed Fugue & Strike (2023), which Current Affairs calls “a remarkable poetic project, unlike anything else in literature today.” Protean, The Cleveland Review of Books, Eighteen-Century Fiction, Poetry Daily, Annulet, mercury firs, dollar bills, and an NFTA bus shelter have featured his writing. He has taught community-based poetry  and currently supports a community education project on Palestine.