Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office


                                     The Brass-Elevator Mountaineer

                                                A weak imitation of

                                                  Osip Mandelstam

                                  For whom we pray, “Memory eternal”


Our lives no longer sense truth around them
In our ewails we are afraid of each other’s words

But whenever there’s an eye-rolled whisper
It’s about the brass-elevator mountaineer

The ten tiny worms of his fingers
His words like mountains of loot

The waving tendrils atop his head
The glitter of his shiny Tesla

Wheels stained with a **** of groveling bosses
He toys with the tributes of his house pets:

          One clenches his fisties
          Another salutes
          A third pledges eternal loyalty

He pokes out his fingers and grabs ‘em by their _

He magic-markers mass deportations:
Three hundred or more for El Salvador
A hundred or so for Guantanamo
Uncounted hundreds to disappear
From routine check-ins here

             “Your search has returned zero (0) matching records”

He rolls the possibilities of _ ___ on his tongue
          like diet sodas
He wishes he could deport his former best friends forever

Our lives no longer sense truth around them