LAST BUS

by Margery Ross





I catch the last bus
out of downtown DC on April 4, 1968.
Fires loom and looters
have a field day at
D. J. Kaufman’s across
Pennsylvania Avenue from the DOJ
where I monitor urban riots
for the Attorney General. Now
it’s me in the midst of the melee
headed toward Georgetown
hoping to get home.

Fifty-two years, history repeats,
it’s one step forward, five back.
Police still kill with impunity,
cities burn, no end to toxic words
from a reality TV celeb—
good trouble trashed as anarchy.
When reading Ta-Nehisi Coates
five years ago I protested
exaggeration. No more.
Between the World and Me—
That last bus is leaving.


Margery Ross is an artist, poet and avid book listener trying to survive in Washington, D.C.

PROJECTIONS

by Cally Conan-Davies

Large blue letters projected over the entrance to the Trump International Hotel in Washington on Monday night read “Pay Trump Bribes Here,” an allusion to questions about President Trump’s business affairs with foreign governments. Photo by Liz Gorman. —The New York Times, May 16, 2017

I passed the old post office a week ago—
saw its new name and sighed. A cab slowed
for a red light right in front, its rooftop ad
read Rise of the Underground. I took a photo
from the opposite side of the road. No light stabbed
the dark entrance. But the hotel name and the ad
lined up for a bit an embryonic, eerie sentence.
The signs are multiplying. That night I saw a rat
at the border of Georgetown. It had died
but bright blood was still leaking from its head.


Cally Conan-Davies is a writer who wanders and wonders.