tragedy into the cloudy-eyed goldfish at the strip mall, IV drip nobility 

into someone who needs naloxene and curbstomp the man homeless at the end of the block

into Jesus

it’s a sun vomiting pink and orange all over cracked-asphalt parking lots

and sagging center city garbage, adroit moonlight dragging its tongue over 

teddy bears sutured to telephone poles and beaten into mud-ugly memorials,

bumpers and bullets bending bodies theatrical

poetry ploughshares tombstones and headstones and footstones and no-stones,

makes suffering beautiful and tasty, wrung empty like oranges half-gutted by a press 

and half-hanging from a tree