TARGET

by Joe Amaral

Is it a person?
Oh no, did it get burned?
Looted? Robbed? Murdered?
Is it okay?

That’s a big box store.
Thick-necked. Hard to press.
Sells hoodies and jeans.
Dresses provocatively.
Damaging.
So empty inside now.
Gutted.

Seriously though, can it breathe?
Does it need water? Mama?
Call the police knee. Did it die?

Poor store, almost like a person.
Hard to fit in a bodybag.
There is video evidence.
Linoleum riot for inanimate rights!

Did it have a family? Friends?
Coworkers? A soul?
Will people miss it forever?
What is its past history?
Arrest record?
Stock market trend?

Ahem.      For profit.
Portfolio is looking up.
Tax sheltered. Bailout ready.
Owner made millions.
In a hazardous pandemic.
Workers get paid shit.
Unprotected. Wage theft.

Why are we only mourning
the humanity of lost property?
Joe Amaral,
Injustice reaction:
“Cleanup on Aisle 7”

Insurance will cover.
Nice being able to live again.
Exist. Mend.

Corporate thug.
Got what it deserved.

Joe Amaral’s first poetry collection The Street Medic won the 2018 Palooka Press Chapbook  Contest.

DILEMMA

by Joe Amaral

The large, bold woodcut image of a supplicant male slave in chains appears on the 1837 broadside publication of John Greenleaf Whittier's antislavery poem, "Our Countrymen in Chains." The design was originally adopted as the seal of the Society for the Abolition of Slavery in England in the 1780s, and appeared on several medallions for the society made by Josiah Wedgwood as early as 1787. —Library of Congress

Six minutes until game time
and the anthem is about to begin.

I’m afraid to kneel for inequality
in front of 11,000 drunk people

holding their hands half-heartedly
over hearts awaiting the start of

a collegiate soccer game where voice
rather than tangible action counts.

I want to avoid the hostile sneers of fans
awake in fake patriotism, ignorant to

police brutality. My kids follow the lead
of the crowd and stand. I ditch my family,

climbing concrete steps into the breeze-
way, my back to the flag, ducking into

a bathroom. The blood and soil floor is
piss-stained. I sort of kneel, listening as

the reverberation of a bad singer gravels
something antiquated and fragilely austere.

I feel for those going through the motions
dead-eyed. They know dutiful conformity

is an empty gesture unspoken. But a fist
in the air, a knee on the ground, now that

is no small token.

Joe Amaral works 48-hour shifts as a paramedic on the central coast of California. He has two young daughters, Zelia and Rui, and his wife Marina is a surgical nurse. They love spelunking outdoors, camping, traveling and hosting foreign exchange students. His writing has appeared worldwide in awesome places like 3Elements Review, Arcadia Magazine, Crow Hollow 19, The Good Men Project, The Rise Up Review and Writers of the Portuguese Diaspora. Joe won the 2014 Ingrid Reti Literary Award. 

A PANTOUM MORASS OF SOCIAL MORES

by Joe Amaral 

“He’s winning this. His critics are losing. We’re better for it.” —Tim Kawakami, The (San Jose) Mercury News, September 7, 2016. KHARTOON! by Khalid.

                                                for Colin Kaepernick


They sack their own hypocritical souls,
judging a biracial man sitting down between
Gatorade coolers, bench warmer, while
standing in safe zones chanting anthems.

Character assassinating a person-
hostile when their comfortable tedium
is knelt upon during an incomplete poem,
overheated, entwined in symbolic confliction.

Dislodged from routine surroundings, habits
of public conformity become glare and troll;
despite loafing when the flag waves on private
TV: bloviating from couches about abstract duty.

In my Catholic days I swung suffocating incense
before hearing the priest who married my parents
molested little boys. We spurned the cross in peace.
Pleas from true patriots are treated with violence.

Some only meme, righteous as sacramental fire
while buying foreign cars, clothes and smartphones
made by slave labor, then pout: THANKS OBAMA!
Colin audibles brave; to Hail Mary the fallow loam

of this country, as American as freedom can be, calling
to the knee-jerks and neutrals, even to the haters,
for a healing conversation amongst culpable toxicity—
warming a bench for enemies to connect, sit,
and see.

Joe Amaral likes to spelunk around the California central coast as a paramedic and stay-at-home dad. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in 3Elements Review, Arcadia Magazine, Crow Hollow 19, Writers of the Portuguese Diaspora, Zingara Poet and other awesome places. Joe won the 2014 Ingrid Reti Literary Award. He also hiked Mount Kilimanjaro. It was epic.