THE STAND STILL WORLD

Akilah Oliver

time, my favorite escapee, tricks, appears as
narrator, then a broken brake coil, then
fifty, no know its sixty-five, now its seventy
children burned, top floor nursery, the Kumbakonam temple town,
southern India region, where is today, back in a parking lot,
would you buy, a brown messiah, reproduced on a white hoodie,
oh my, her grandson shies in her fervor, it is cute, black market
deals produced as scripts, between lights the
folly mistress, she thinks of some card games,
we might want to play to rope in clients, i think i
am admired, but the runners are stopping their
steroids & quitting, the Sudanese government is complicit,
the refugees are in Chad now, or Jordan wants one hundred fifty
thousand for one year’s stay, a way to measure the life
span of rubble, once the family home, i have an
empty book bag for you to put these tales in,
see i am a griot collector now, i tell you these things are happening,
the complicity, the rubble, the scripts, the money,
the burns, the runners, the lights, the deals,
all circular errors, each so fixed, real, & also traces,
blushing moments