A Sam Sax Poem

Description for Police

what did the suspect look like?

the sound a shadow makes breathing tallow & spume back
into its heaving barnacled body, deranged gospel of milk-teeth,
a votive candle extinguished in a flat glass of cola.

what was the suspect’s gender?

something like a brick buried in the walls of a library.
or maybe just the word – brick – buried in books: demolished
tower scattered amidst babel, a building hidden in a building.

what was the suspect’s race?

a beam of light
throws up its hands
& is skinned alive.

did the suspect have a weapon?

thank god we no longer carve the shape of our dead
general’s faces into mountains. thank god we’ve bred
wolves into dogs into dolls

thank god we’ve deformed wheat germ & corn
into new edible organism. don’t forget all the good
that can be done with a scythe.

what was the suspect wearing?

cotton, trapped in a bottle of rubbing alcohol, or caught on a length of chain fence,
or woven into the fabric of a bulk-pack of white t’s from the grocery. gets dirty
easy but for that one night, you’ve never seen anything cleaner in your life

what did the suspect say?

if you look at any animate object
under a microscope, you’ll see
it’s made of smaller screaming parts.

if you smash the microscope, take the blood
it makes of your hands & bathe your eyes. tell me
what you see, how simple & red the light.

(2016)