by James K. Zimmerman
and I heard
the three of you shouting
outside the window of my
fifth-floor walk-up
on a sweaty summer night
and I ran
to the window to see
you staggering out
from the shit-hole bar
across the street
and I saw
the two of them kicking you
in the back, in the head
holding you by the arm
so you couldn’t get away
and I knew
you were too drunk to know
if this was real or the
final chapter in the DTs
that were your closest friends
for all those years
and I saw
them pull out their blades
and stab you over and over
in the arms and legs and
back and head
and I thought
I should do something
shout out, call the police
do something
and I stayed
at the window watching
in the after-midnight stench
and screech and scream
of the dreamless night
and I saw
you stumble to the corner
where a miraculous yellow cab
swept you up to take you
to the hospital
or the morgue
and I watched
the two of them saunter
and slide down the street
in adrenaline-pumped swagger
and I raged
as they wiped off their blades
and closed them up and
put them back in their pockets
and I smelled
the fear, mine and yours
and the blood and the
sweat and the stench
of the dumpster where they
threw the bloody handkerchiefs
and I heard
the siren of the cop car
at the end of the block
coming down the street
and I saw
the two of them drag on a
casual cigarette or a joint
in the rotating red glow of
the oncoming cop car lights
and I saw
the cops drive up the street
as the two of them walked on by
and I shouted
in my mind: “that’s them
they’re the ones
stop them
make them pay”
and I knew
in the dreamless after-midnight
stench and scream
I knew
the cops would not stop
James K. Zimmerman is the winner of the 2009 Hart Crane Memorial Poetry Contest and the 2009 Daniel Varoujan Award. His work appears or is upcoming in SLAB, Penumbra, Off Channel, Winning Writers, ICON, SNReview, and the Poetry Annual from Wild Leaf Press.
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