Spoon Jackson
Originally published in The Evergreen Review Issue 105 in 2002.
I.
What is this place
I am in?
One foot in darkness
One foot in light?
What is this place?
Where dark buzzards circle
morning, noon and night?
What is this place
I am in?
Where Amtrak trains whistle
by on unseen tracks
on the other side of the mountains?
II.
I sit at the base of the light pole
All around me there are people
on the basketball court
Three Mexican-Americans are doing burpies
listening to soft rock music on the radio.
Across the basketball court
multi-colored Christians come together
to pray to their God.
While African-Americans slap
dominoes on the concrete tables
behind me.
I sit at the light pole
reading Shakespeare
