Over toasted bagels make me think of guns


When you live in America

and you try to compose a poem 


 

about over toasted bagels,

 

you think about dying.



 

You want to think about 

how beautiful life is 

with its variety of bagels—blueberry, cheddar, pumpkin—


 

but the image of burned skin 

keeps on mocking you.  



 

So you think of the best bagel you ever had—

cream cheese, lox and sweet red onion 

but the words just don’t flow.

 


What flows is flesh fried 

by a bullet
 in isle 3

 and the last light that shoppers see 

reminds them of the spark from their toaster

that morning.  

What flows is:

 

Click. Click. Click.

 

Hole in the lungs.

Bone in the brain.



 

What flows are the blue lips.


 

What flows are lives spilling out 

all over the floor

 


in the bakery department.

 



Just one more spontaneous outburst
of gunfire 

in the supermarket down the street.  

 


There is a horrific thrill 

of watching 

bodies drop on the security cam

 


like the thrill of seeing a 747 crash 

because 

that could have been 
my flight,


 

my body

sprawling in the bagel isle


but today it isn’t.  


 

Not today.