Art Thief
by Lee Sharkey
Who can explain this ? We know who the agent is, but who is his
agent ?
What path did he walk to the vanishing point ?
What is this seasonless corpus fat and elastic ?
We have become wind and muscle
What he stole was a reminder, but its absence also is a reminder
Was it the slope–shouldered women holding handkerchiefs to
their faces ?
Come April, frogs chuckle again how many years nested
in memory ?
Where are the bright fibers that drifted down in the light through
the mill’s tall windows ?
Last year’s grasses fold as if with a sigh over each other
Ghost gray and platinum
What is a safe and undisclosed location ?
Whose is the deity that eats his children ?
Palestine is at his doorstep
Soldering a tree out of spent teargas canisters
Smuggling workers across the border soaked to the shins inside a
water tank
Who is sitting in the stripped orchard breathing in what they
once tended ?
Was it the hand on the child’s shoulder ?
We have only the wealth that does not impoverish