Poetry

Credo Action photo

By

Alejandro Escudé

The Neutrality Guillotine

The neutral world waits; all those neutral people

in their neutral houses. They’re hoping the sky won’t

be syphoned from its blue. That the clouds will remain

strung up like plastic hangars; the neutral mayor crosses

his tiny, pixelated fingers. Neutral cars pull up along

busy internet freeways. They hope the highways won’t

be turned into toll roads. When neutral people awake

to a new neutral day, they’ll find they’re serving a neutral

lord mightier than the lord they knew. For now, the neutral

people wait wearing those silly, neutral grins. I wonder

how the neutrals see us? I heard their favorite neutral

stories are the Peasant Revolt and the French Revolution;

they teach their neutral children about these events.

I was told that when they look up or down from their

screened-in state, they see innumerable frogs hopping.

We look like frogs to them! For now, neutral engineers

try to spare themselves from exploitation; they sit in a

Houston mission control-like room, smoking cigarettes

small as dashes, rattling their neutral feet. Waiting.

Alejandro Escudé

Alejandro Escudé’s first book of poems, My Earthbound Eye, was published in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.