Violence in Public 


The stars. 
Shattered beer bottle on the sidewalk. 
A man’s star teeth. Or just stars. 

The six-inch dream beetle
whose topside I ripped off, scurrying 
closer to my head. Thought

the violence was done. A blond man 
tried to kill it too. I questioned his blondness. 
His hovering. 

Someone will tell me I’m all over: I am that bed, 
that man, that beetle, that woman trying to kill it.  
I thought the violence was done. Twice

I’ve seen a man in daylight shaking 
a sapling. Those strange sapling perpetrators 
startled me less than

my pulling off a woman’s head. Holding it 
up by the hair, teach me no image, unable to wake, 
scaring up a crowd, just to crowd it out.