Giant in the Hood

Giant in the Hood

There’s a giant in the hood.
Our future’s jingling in his pockets —

It’s not just spare change either —
his pockets bulge and billow,
bank doors flap and rattle.

There is a giant in the hood.

His grid, translucent and shimmering
almost past sight, full of shaky promise,
and explosions, full of self consumption
defines the contours of our block —

The print curtains you hung
last week to cheer up the
back bed room — he made them in China.

The wicker hamper is his design,
and your paycheck that is half
what it used to be,
and Mother’s trust, and margin calls,

even the old photos are his.
Great-grandfather’s war belonged
to the giant.

Great-grandmother
could only weep.

There is a giant in the hood.

Even in this green city
where most would live in peace
we tear ass race to grab the scraps
he tosses off as
the cost of doing business.

There’s a dumb, hungry sneer
on his lips that always lie.
There’s meat between its teeth,
other than that, the giant’s not alive,
tho law says otherwise,
gives it the same rights as
an individual,
more.

As soon as you catch his name,
he changes it.

It plays both sides of the street,
bribes us with concerts,
an alumni center at the university,
while at the capital it buys legislation
that erases our right to
protect the water life requires.

There is a giant in the hood —
a perfect union of government
and commerce, a billowing hedge fund
a slick silk suit, jackets lined with explosives
and autocad.

There’s a giant in the hood —
and Democracy like any good idea
fractals to lint, to dust, when it
hits the streets of a world market
paved with debris, and grist, and blood.


©Susan Bright, 2007



Susan Bright is the author of nineteen books of poetry. She is the editor of Plain View Press which since 1975 has published one-hundred-and-ninety books. Her work as a poet, publisher, activist and educator has taken her all over the United States and abroad. Her most recent book, The Layers of Our Seeing, is a collection of poetry, photographs and essays about peace done in collaboration with photographer Alan Pogue and Middle Eastern journalist, Muna Hamzeh.

Announcement: The Plain View Press e-store is online.


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