A Ghazal: Water 

am i not a body you fill with the muck, beer cans, & gray corpses you see 

knocking up against the rocks? you make me into a fist & wade in the water 

call yourself Moses, trying to fix a problem you created. thought you could play God &

you could hurt the people & they would never know it was you. Just blame the nature of water. 

the river will eventually become filled with grime & bellied with worm covered secrets you’d say. 

ask how will they know it was us who made a cemetery in the bed of the White River’s murky water?

you didn’t realize that i keep a shoal of bluegill, smallmouth bass, & the ghost 

of all you've done, here, resting in the rise & fall of this glistening brown water 

since you've named me, ive forgotten who i was. i’ve forgotten i was born restless 

& glittering under a full moon. over time, you made me believe i am a villainous water 

that poisons & suffocates. my beginning is one that took place long before you shaped 

& named me. i came from no pipe or rod or stone. & am i not still a body of water

you mapped & called it conquest? i called it the beginning of the end. how did you divide 

me against myself? & did you not fill me with cigarette boxes, eyeless dolls & plastic water 

bottles that float with bones of birds twisted into plastic bags? did you think you could poison me 

without it affecting you? look at me & i will show you the monster we both see reflected in the water 

as the current carries half bone half open flesh floating fish away from the homes of the wealthy, 

as if they cannot drown;  as if they are safer than all the rest of us from death that waits in the water.