Ari Feld

Global Widespread Panic

Exhausted by insomnia, I find this porch
and leave the dawn
to incant itself.
Hours seem to circulate, meteors missile the night, my hearing
recovers— stations blipping between the static— and the rest
of my senses remain
indecipherable. It’s clear that I’ve escaped.
I even find an abandoned beer.
Next I hear earthmovers or the earth is moving
and I hear it.
Then the rain stops and I can see
that the static is the clatter of foot traffic in the street— citizens
becoming something else. No slim tumult this, which explains
why the homeowner
doesn’t bother to kick me off his porch.
It’s the eve of everything else and we don’t have to ask anymore:
What’s happening to us, is someone here a doctor, who’s an orphan,
who’s a killer?
We know.