no hell broke loose
By Katia Kapovich
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Europe’s Gate
A red boat sailed on muddy grass
on the bald lawn between the
checkpoint and the rusty dumpster,
two mismatched oars crossed X-wise by the gate.
It rained flags on this side and ropes on the other.
One bird squealed in and out of the blue mist
depositing droppings on your hat
as you were about to step across the border.
A trapped flag clapped about its metal pole,
then flipped violently like a gunshot, because
that’s what flags do under rain. You looked back,
neither turning into a salt pillar,
nor hearing the Minotaur in the maze
behind your back, where a customs officer struggled
with a pump’s unruly hose that writhed over whatever
sewers gush with filling the air with blessings of manure.
And while the officer twining with his hose lost, no hell broke loose.
When you can’t sleep it’s good to read poetry. Most will nearly kill you with ennui. You’re gassing up the chainsaw with the first stanza, the tree drops at the second, and you’re sawing logs by the third. The risk is, you might find a good one, or get just one line stuck in your head, like a rusty dumpster, so that now you’ll never sleep right again.