Ripping through the riotous
Protests and pleas
For unalienable rights
And dignity
Is a speck of lead
Just a tiny speck
Instigating
By pulling flesh
From bone and bone
And meat from meat.
From separate homes,
But here they meet
Demanding change
As organs
Of the city beat
Inflaming the site of trauma:
The city streets.

The river’s frozen over.
Bits wincing beneath Will’s feet
As he trudges toward the center
Of Kewaunee’s muddied deep.
He scrapes away the powdered snow
To reveal the contents buried
Beneath the window to the world
Where time is frozen nearly
As much as the ice that froze it there.
There’s garbage, but in it: beauty.
A wristwatch where the second hand
Doesn’t do its duty.
It’s stuck at five, the hour twelve,
And the minute mute at thirty.

Blessed here
In the middle
Of the river, Kewaunee.