Gandhi with the Wind 

It doesn’t matter how I know this woman
I just know her, and you do.

I’d been out for a spin, come back in
she was in the bathroom so I killed time
looking at her refrigerator door.

Taped up there was Jane Goodall
and Obama
and Gandhi
and Martin Luther King
and Maya Angelou 
and Pete Singer 
and Buddha. 

I could hear her coming out of the bathroom
and down the hall, so one last big swallow of
the Starbucks, and I dropped the cup in 
the recycling bin. 

She stopped in the door; staring, alarmed. 
I sniffed for smoke; it was clear as mountain-fresh air. 
I checked my fly; it was flown. 

“Wrong color, wrong bin,” she said. And waited, glaring.

I was going to ask what color to put her in, instead, 

went for out another, permanent spin. 

4th of July

It was Iowa again, the midwest again.

Big storm upstate, river way up high, almost to the bridge 

people all along the bridge, Americans all of them 

fat, again.

Under the bridge eight ducks were trapped and stranded 

in a backwash, trying to fight out, trying to fly out. 

Cop on the bridge said they’d been trying to get free

for two hours, you could see their orange feet trying hard

under water.

Cop said if they’d just tire out and let themselves be pulled

down into the underwater current, they’d pop up downstream,

resurface free, and live. 

Then, the cop left.

The ducks kept fighting on the surface, twitching their tails dry, necks leaning 
against the surf, little black eyes trying to SEE their way out and over the trouble ... 

A fat woman, really fat, laughed a greasy gross screen-addicted laugh, looked down 
past her gut to the trying but tiring ducks and said

“Well, at least it’s entertainment!”