Dwone Anderson-Young and Ahmed Said, Seattle, Washington, 2014
I walk through an alleyway of saliva,
soured with smiles. A couple asks me
to take their picture in front of The Gum Wall.
The city carries itself passionately.
So much metal today. So many frames
moving in and out of each other.
I walk. A friend texts [the news].
Ah, they have killed me again.
Art, in its truest form, repeats.
Outside the museum, I static
beneath a man as he hammers.
He is without a face,
but sadness still. A history of this:
men hammering their grief into me,
my grief becoming the rarest wine.
What can I say? I forget all their names.
It was bound to happen.
Everything leaves—
the wet mouth of rain, the throat that threw,
It’s never enough to love a thing,
you must do the work, too—
except the trees that, in this city,
become an emerald rush of hands reaching out.
How many times must it be said?
There is [blood] parading the streets, I reply.
The market bricks with whirs and wears
the violent churning of noise on its lips like balm.
I drink a cup of coffee,
sitting on a bench overlooking The Sound.
There is so much blue.