Charts

by Alex Thomas

Run the numbers again and hope
that you come up with something
more sure of your survival. Run

the numbers again and hope for
a new figure on the other side
of the equals sign. The New
Yorkers tell me that they gauge

the death by the sirens. Like
a fatal reading of palms. They
are hiding the bodies in trucks
kept cold inside. And I call my
friends in the Village to hear their
voices telling me they are not
in the bodies on the cold trucks.

Washington is empty and I
smoked marijuana on the
steps of the Supreme Court
only to see if they still arrest
the trespassers. They don’t.

Alex Thomas lives in Washington DC where he writes about politics for Playboy. His poetry has been featured in Cherry Tree, Cimarron Review, Roanoke Review, and elsewhere.