los angeles is in the air/a few
acres of protest within five hundred
miles of city/stretched/tendons
in the streets/now
muscled by federal policy/bent
to hyperextension/bone
in socket grinding: a home
for some/a charnel house
for others/this America
not the America we learned
to love/the disruption/
the disunity/the distemper/
troops in riot gear/rubber bullets
a bicep flex/
the fist/well-knuckled
in the face of the weak:
this new scapegoat of migration
is shaken in our faces/blinding us
to the Samaritan within:
all the while/a sleight of hand
finger tipping through the
streets as planned
Al Ortolani, a winner of the Rattle Chapbook Prize, has been featured in Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac, Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry, and George Bilgere’s Poetry Town. He was the recipient of the Bill Hickok Humor Award from I-70 Review. He’s a contributing editor to the Chiron Review.
