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Enfilade*
By John Davis author info
Enfilade You feel surrounded.
How could you have known
your hearts desire
was a square peg? After
a lifetime of having
been choreographed for other
peoples motions,
who knew there was a dance
you could fall
into that'd get your brain
glowing, your heart
pumping applause to your inner ear?
Having never been free
to move around, your dream
doesnt know its own voice,
or wingspan. Practiced
at maneuvering covertly,
is it now paralyzed
on freedoms threshold,
still dodging light?
Open space is nothing
to it but a snipers opportunity.
Does it crouch in doorways
then, afraid of sky? Knowing
that moneychangers & marketing
strategists stoop behind boulders,
cartoon coyotes with Acme TNT,
do you pray for a roadrunners
whirl of legs, its dustcloud speed?
Or a sapient urbane rabbits
magic finger to stop a rifles
barrel? How could you have
known believing in miracles
was prerequisite, & tears,
& vertigo, & open wounds
& a kind of surrender or hope
in something maybe spanning
over you, a strong hand of love.
You who want only to practice
kind living and healthy work
but find yourself huddled in shadow
hoping to slip beneath the radar
of multinationals & megachurches.
You roll petitions across your tongue,
hoping your legs are fast enough
to outrun creditors & critics.
You pray for a place in which the script
doesnt require you to walk
blind, sharpen your incisors
or devolve into a new predator.
Enfilade is a French which tranlsates as "to put thread in" as in a string of beads. As a metaphor for warfare it referes to threading a line of soldiers with bullets, to march through a narrow pass, to create (make a thread) line of artillery against enemy lines.
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