You look at a shitty graffiti on the side
of an abandoned high rise
and imagine the awesomeness
of the bird that must have scooped the artist up from the street.
So much is wasted.
The most beautiful words I’ve heard today were used
to describe the creases on a policeman’s uniform.
The graffiti says Podemos
vivir sin policías. This is not
the shitty part.
I draw a sandpiper next to the inscription
in a book I’m gifting to a writer friend
who mistakes it for a rat.
So much is what we set out to do,
and not enough.
The bird would have to be the opposite
of the color of despair, but I cannot describe it.
I drive around the city at night looking for the artist.
I want her to tell me what it is
I can live with.
*title from Larry Levis
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Guillermo Rebollo Gil is a writer, sociology professor, and translator. Recent and forthcoming publications include poetry in Second Factory, Poetry Northwest, Pacifica Literary Review, and HAD; prose in Trampset and Jellyfish Review; literary criticism in Annulet; and scholarly articles in Journal of Autoethnography and Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies.