unrest under the crows
A Poem by Logan Anthony
where shattered silence thunders into an aching
body like an empty room. the fragmented country
digs in its shrapnel, surviving within, as part of us.
learned behaviors are hardest to recognize
and toughest to break. the prisoner waits weeklong
in an unlocked cell. a mind believes itself
captive, wills itself to become it.
you’ve exhausted the ways of living you were taught.
know this: idleness will too take its toll.
this has been the life cycle of society
since its conception: parasitic.
we carry on what we’ve come to resent long before
we learn to recognize our own history of contributions.
in this overcrowded vestibule clotted with bodies,
i must know: what symptoms of society have you come
to comply with? what currents were you taught to drift along
and which to break against? lives ago, i never expected
the criminalization of transience—how would the poets live,
if not as vagabonds? how would the artists survive if chained
to a system of poverty feeding only the mouths
that feed back into it? taut jaws of codependency
that render the employee helpless to escape.
the claws of capitalism have shed their sheathes.
unborn into wealth, the body and its labor
become the capital.
a silent question stalks beneath every interaction:
what are you willing to trade your body
and its fleeting time for?
the berries go bad in the fridge uneaten,
for you weren’t home a single night this week
to enjoy the treat you allowed yourself,
funds taken from the meager salary you manage
to bring home despite being a mere middleman
directing funds from one company to another
bills passing through your hands so quickly
they’re never actually there. you couldn’t hold onto
it if you tried. when i think about money a dark veil
casts over my line of vision. doom nestles tight inside
my chest once again and the buzzing of the flies
shreds the remains of my mind. i never wanted to work
this life away. i never cared about a filthy green
piece of paper until i had to.
from the moment of decision, the wind
snuck its voice beneath the flaps of my hat, chilling me
from inside my faux furs. i don’t know why i felt so recognized.
i understood in an instant not a calling but a coming.
i saw a path arrowing feverishly ahead
and without pause, without looking back,
i dove after the twisting, turning darkness
shot between the trees ahead of me.
nothing but tracks to follow in a shadowed wood
absent of the marble moon i had so hoped
would accompany me this time.
see, an untethered mind abandons all direction.
somewhere new, somewhere safe, only to falter,
to send you cascading three feet short of the landing
waiting to catch you. there’s always an impending doorway
coming to a close, the lock clicking in your ears
before you’re within earshot. the onslaught
of unnamed tomorrows with their ruthless approach
slicked these cracked glasses with a bubbling brine,
distorting all i’d ever looked for in a kaleidoscopic mess
of color and chemical. unbestowed of the knowledge,
i regretted the chances i’d failed to take to learn
which trajectories to follow to find my way back
from whence i came, from the chaos we’d swirled
out of without meaning to.
stars burning out like fags—
in cellophane or rugs.
i can say that as a fag.
i remember my queer trailblazers,
i worship them on my knees,
in this country built upon the injustices
it upholds and enacts every day.
in this country where pigs root wildly in the flooded streets,
swinging baton and spitting bullet, felling queer and bipoc
and disabled and trans bodies in troves—trees that add
up to forests clear-cut, young through old.
and behind us, the bloody horizon advances.
smoldering meadows gape where our canopies
once towered, where once, in awe, we envied
the crows beating wings back and
forth across their boundless sky.
Logan Anthony is an American queer writer and transgender artist from Indiana. Anthony holds a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing & English and works as a freelance writer. Find Logan’s work in Thin Air Magazine, Hare’s Paw Literary Journal, The Madison Review, Stoneboat Literary Journal, The Write Launch, and more. You can read their work at www.thewritinglog.com and follow them on social media @the_writing_log