In a Time of Thuggery
       

Brecht wished for a tiny counting apparatus
to take the place of his heart.

A new matter-of-factness, not generated
by the goddess of facile type.

I ate my food between slaughters.
Nothing that I do gives me the right

to eat my fill. He knew that every day
something had to be fixed.

The machine was shuttling along
just fine, they would say, you're the one

with the problem, hush now.
A great deal of what had been frozen in me

melted in America
and I rediscovered my old yearning for painting.

I carefully and deliberately destroyed
a part of my past

wrote his friend Grosz
in A Little Yes and a Big No.

The Explosion artist had been to the war
to end all wars, this was before

prosthetics and the V-effect
when collective subjectivity was newfangled.

One night after returning to Berlin
he drank too much, lost his footing

and died from the effects of a staircase.
When you speak of our weaknesses

Brecht requested
Speak also of the dark time

that you have escaped.
For we could not ourselves be gentle.

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Copyright © 2019 Rachel Galvin All rights reserved
from Elevated Threat Level
Green Lantern Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission