don’t blink. don’t blink

Kathleen Hellen

what happened to black history?
we shall overcome: copays. mortgages. the tangled nets of bots
disguised as human.
what’s the point of love?
take James. for instance. at the clinic. hooked
on happy endings. which seems to me (Sleepless in … ).
the dream.
projected on a Chinese screen from Walmart.
projected from the deck of the empire’s last state-building.
(see Zinn. A People’s History).

i care about
jane’s disabled son.
childcare. oldcare. water justice. vets.
i care about the sleepless in the streets.
the hungry licking cat food out of tins.

blah blah. beep beep. ka-ching. the din
of inequities.

James says go ahead. put my chin on the rest. he measures how light changes
as it enters my perception. (see 1989) (see Tiananmen).

i care about the measled map of dots.
the hubbub of the grub. the grab. the hurly burly rattle.

Kathleen Hellen’s debut collection Umberto’s Night won the poetry prize from Washington Writers’ Publishing House. She is the author of The Only Country Was the Color of My Skin, Meet Me at the Bottom, and two chapbooks. Featured on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, Hellen’s work has appeared in Baltimore Review, DIAGRAM, Diode Poetry Journal, Massachusetts Review, Nimrod, PANK, Sixth Finch, Waxwing, West Branch, Zone 3, and elsewhere. Awards include prizes from the H.O.W. Journal and Washington Square Review.