Poetry

AP photo

By

Alejandro Escudé

Rundown

Let him refuse. Let him live just out of reach.

The noose has a life of its own and gravitates

Toward the less powerful. It’s pyramid-sound.

Let him keep floating along the bulrushes.

Erroneous-me. The buzzing the phones made.

Oh happy sage! They would police-stage you,

They would offer you Trump-head Pez-candies.

There’s no Hawaii. There’s only Kurt Cobain’s

Shotgun lying on the floor. So don’t you do it!

Don’t give them the rundown, what the finger-

Bones thought just before the alert went out,

Shaking the non-voters, the politicos, the snakes.

Snake after snake after snake—and now they

Want you. For what? What can you answer

That a snot-nosed software engineer cannot?

Submit to nothing that cannot be evinced.

Based on the employee refusing to talk to the FCC about the erroneous alert in Hawaii

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.