Who was it that foolishly believed these days would not be normal? As if Jake Tapper could

conjure a correctional facility that lurks & mirrors the living world. As if the gangs would cease

to twist fingers & track the contraband in hand-to-hand exchanges. Your name is your number

is your name is your number is your –

The body that birthed you

That God-vessel that wove

A knot of knees and breath

This body is now under

Eight blankets. This body

Aches. An unknown body

Has barged through one

Of the many doors left

Open by this body & now

Sieges this body as each nation

Begins to accept the body

As a body in need of pretty cages

Body in need of containment, in need

Of distance, in need of new

Dialect & the many abstractions

That roam the body & the empty

Streets when the body finds itself

Left alone with no other body

To hold it. Rough translation:

Your body is in a cage but not

This poem or its institutionalized

Poetics. No, the body is no metaphor.

It is a caged animal. The body of bloom

& breakfast, body of birth & bought-Forces

Now houses an unknown ailment

Only weeks after a West Coast

Journey. This body once held you.

This body will one day be held

By the soil or the sky or the body

Of water once crossed. This body

Will fade into the world you once

Vandalized, as will your body

& the others. But, please, body, more time