July 21, 2020

prayers for Big Pookie

and the nursing home in Walnut Creek, California where she waits, exiled, behind a 
numbered door as the casualties mount on the other side. Prayers for her daughter, 
watching the camera crews prowl the perimeter of the grounds, a sticky palm curled
around the phone in her pocket. Prayers for a city seven hundred miles north, 
finding itself suddenly under siege, and prayers for the yellow-shirted women 
returning night after night, their arms linked in unshakeable resolve. Prayers for Chicago.
Prayers for Minneapolis. Prayers for Nueces, Texas and Calcasieu, Louisiana and
Davidson, Tennessee and the bar graphs glowing red and rising. Prayers for what it will
take and what will be taken. Prayers for Big Pookie, who could be my grandmother,
or yours, whose eyes turn to the window, as all eyes do, searching the clouds for signs.