Massacre at Ywahoo Falls
1.
We're going to the white dome
where they've never seen us before,
dragging a sled of cardboard
with a potato, grandmother's picture
in a broken nickel frame.
We stream to the Capitol
from everywhere.

We are not sons and daughters of the middle class
who are trying to make ends meet.

Our ends
only know each other
from the same mass grave.


2.
A girl from the crowd takes hold of a guitar
and tunes hundreds of years on it,
a dry scent of nasturtium and chicory
upon her fingers, sings of children
who gather one wave after another
cresting upon the stairway
of their representatives.

We have voices,
wrapped in government-issued wool blankets
as gray as your lined faces
to tell you
we are buried
at the bottom of a cave.

Come find us
in our game of hide and seek.

Find us
where we have been forced to go,
places that have made us into adults
before we could be children,


3.
which is what one of the boys said
elbowing his way
to the Jefferson Memorial
before any of his pasty chums
could remove their hands
from their pockets,
not being use to pockets
except on such spectacular occasions.

Why, according to him,
it was his own idea
to come to the Capitol
since everyone was getting bored,
although he'd been exploring
the water table,
measuring the exchange rate
between bubbles and oxygen.

He might decide to become a fish.
There was no law against it.
At least, none he knew about,

which is why he first walked to the reflecting pool,
drawn to water,
the creepy feeling it gave him
each time he touched his face
and saw it fall apart
there at Ywahoo Falls
with War Woman Selu-Sa-tah,
Cornblossom whose silken tassels
turned Kentucky red
where 100 children
were squashed like nits.

He didn't remember details in any order.
Something about falling water.

4.
thinking he was not born
to become a storage tank for memories.
He is.