'Pale grey mop water'- only those who mop recognise that colour. And that's the thing that stands out for me in the face of the mess we deal with im whichever country we are (UK for me).
The way to face it each morning is get up give your head a wobble and carry on mopping, or as the OlD Testament prophet Micah said it: 'to do justice, and to love kindness,
That verse has guided me (or tried to) since I heard it in a retreat many years ago. I love your "give your head a wobble and carry on mopping"...so necessary but oh so challenging. Thank you
As a Minneapolitan abroad, I am losing my mind, and I am so grateful (yes, somehow, grateful) for the artful writers who draw me in to the nightmare most of my beloveds are waking to every morning. Thank you, Michael.
These letters, from other local poets and writers, are also beautiful and evocative and important. They echo one another and this poem in eerie and convicting ways: https://lithub.com/tag/letter-from-minnesota/
In the bleak reality that Michael sets down in his poem, these lines in particular expose for me the double-edged power of stories:
“… It is a story that believes itself
to be permanent (an odd word,
because nothing is),
a story that is somehow
made of white light
bent and glaring to illuminate
what happened, then tell you
it did not happen…”
Stories can be forced on us, try to make us believe that things are this way, not that way; that what was true is no longer true; and that the storytellers themselves are the only ones who can save us. This has been the case since Plato’s fearful people believed the shadows on the cave walls instead of the reality outside, since Orwell’s “Newspeak” tried to control people’s very thought and mode of expression, right up to the “post-truth” society we now find ourselves in.
And yet, therein lies the positive power of stories, because we can refuse those stories forced on us and hold onto the belief that we can make – and remake – our own stories and, in the process, remake our world.
As you yourself once said, Padraig, ““We need stories of belonging that move us towards each other, not from each other; ways of being human that open up the possibilities of being alive together; ways of navigating our differences that deepen our curiosity, that deepen our friendship, that deepen our capacity to disagree, that deepen the argument of being alive. This is what we need. This is what will save us. This is the work of peace. This is the work of imagination.”
Yes, yes, Michael's notion of stories "curled" in stories struck me immediately. I've always seen stories as both way more powerful than we tend to think and way more tricky. The tendency to romanticize stories disappears the destructive capacities of stories. Behind every genocide are stories that both organize people's understandings and mobilize those malevolent understandings into violence. But less than that evil extreme are the countless daily stories that try and sell us on the world of power (unjustly wielded) and tyranny. Stories have the power (primal?) both to destroy and to create. I suppose I would distinguish between the stories of the Tyrant and the Defiant. Tyranny produces only propaganda. The Defiant make art.
Also, as a way to build my own resilience at the moment, I’m finding consolation and uplift in certain dance music tracks, like this powerful spoken-word one from Duke Dumont and Tony Walsh called “It Feels Like This”:
“They try to divide us but find that inside us
A light that's so bright that it lights up to guide us
It's joyful, it's hopeful, it's vital, it's vocal
It's openly woken me, totally soulful
And we love, and we hope, and we dream, and we dare
And it sparks in the dark in the air that we share
Now you've got me wondering. At what point might a story morph in to a myth. OR, Myth is a story, maybe or not based on physical provable reality, yet comes completely alive in the heart and soul of humans. That which speaks louder than "reality" is the story we're making...
Absolutely Georgena! Carl Jung's work on myth and psyche is fascinating - I love the line in this article that says "‘Once upon a time’ does not mean ‘once’ in history but refers to events that occur in eternal time, always and everywhere..." https://www.cgjungny.org/myth-and-psyche/
My motto is The shortest bridge between us is a story, and I mean a personal story, because we are seeing the damage of stories made up to keep the status quo, frighten us or control us. I think about how we once sat around the hearth and shared stories. I love the idea of "stories of belonging that move us toward each other."
Thank you, Michael, for your courage in bearing witness to the atrocities you are living. I am so inspired by the stories of how people in Minneapolis are supporting each other right now, whether through peaceful protest or caring for those being hunted. I hope you are all able to find a way to resource yourselves at this time. In the words of Audre Lorde: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation and that is an act of political warfare..."
It feels like we are sleepwalking. That we are watch in things unfolding in front of us in a way that seems unreal, like a waking nightmare that we can not wake from. In the way the poem is almost hypnotic in its structure.
Yes! like before we know it the Constitution will be revised to legitimize horrendous take-over of the masses by the few. AI will make the masses unnecessary. How to thin the herd? Will USA collapse to trigger or join global bankruptcy? Where is Hope now?
For me the poem captures some of the ‘topsy turvy’ nature of what is happening in Minneapolis. Nothing is as it seems, the gaslighting astronomical and tales being spun to cover lies and confuse the narrative. As a Canadian neighbour who grew up in apartheid South Africa I am troubled to witness members of our human family being treated this way ❤️ thank you Michael for articulating the pain
I found the 4 line pattern with those breaks landing in the middle of sentences/thoughts correctly jarring. Maybe even reminiscent of dreams that you wake up in the middle of, and then may struggle to resume. Or nightmares that you wake up in the middle of and then are thrust back into when Sleep wins out again.
I could have seen "a story" be "The Story" as it plays a similarly prominent role in the poem to Sleep and Death and all things that you are either on the inside or outside of with very different implications. And while nothing is permanent, the community that this poem represents is the closest thing to permanent, though it does require continual upkeep and care. Sleep will end. Death, while permanent for the person who dies, you could argue is not permanent for those around that person. A person's death fades away as concentric circles of community and family forget not the person, but the specifics of receiving and reacting to the news of their Death.
Death coming on holiday is also an interesting construct, but feels so familiar and does, correctly, capture that this is a choice for the occupiers, and that for the occupied this is something to survive because it's not forever, it will end.
Matt, wonderful analysis. Your point about “a story” versus “The Story” is fascinating. Also intrigued by the idea of Death being on holiday as a choice, especially from the occupiers’ perspective, that resonates deeply. It carries both absurdity and indictment. And your thought about how death fades outward in concentric circles is haunting and true.
The way you describe the structure of this poem like a dream that you wake up in the middle of is so interesting. Especially considering the content, which has that frozen feeling of nightmares.
To me this poem feels like a message and a warning, “From Minneapolis…” to everyone out there. This can happen here. It can happen anywhere. Just like our dreams can communicate hurt and foreshadow consequences we maybe haven't yet realized in our waking lives, this poem reads like a warning both from a very specific time and place and from somewhere greater, a beyond place that deals in such matters of truth and flourishing.
Michael, thank you for writing this poem, and Pádraig, thank you for sharing. I have a poem or several inside me to write about these times, but it seems too terrible to write (that is a sign that it need to be written?). As one who grew up as a neighbors to MN, and where my dear daughter now lives, the events there are on my mind a large portion of every day. I write from a place of privilege and relative safety for now, but that could change in a moment for me or any of us.
The poem’s grey mop-water is also the grey of the sky and the old snow of Northern winters. Fresh snow falls and stays, as it is too cold to melt, and is sullied by the traffic, just as the people are now sullied by the occupiers. The grey mop-water is also a color that is to me the affect of having to live daily in disbelief…and fear.
Those of us who live after the death of a close one wake up after sleeping, and just for a moment, things were as they were before the death, but reality soon punches us in the gut. The waking is hard.
While those who wish us to stay sleeping may try to sew us down with scarlet thread, I see and read of everyday people tearing off the thread and rising! Their persistence brings me an example and hope. The spring sun’s warmth will melt the ice and snow.
Pádraig, looking forward to seeing you Monday in DC.
That grey mop water sky is so reminiscent of grieving a loved one, those days of grey fatigue that seem as if they could set you in stone. We're in our short lived snow days in NC right now, and that sky is here. I suspect a sky like this might always be a reminder of this poem and these days of our Minnesotan brothers and sisters. The water that is snow, that has been everywhere before here, reminds me that we are everyone, somehow also particles there. I recommit again to hold the light through the darkness stronger than yesterday.
Karen, thank you - you are touching on what this poem evoked in me, too. That feeling upon waking where you are punched in the viscera by the heaviness of grief, heartbreak, and fear that somehow sleep delivered you from... like a little death. And yes, the images Michael uses of being sewn to the mattress remind me of sleep paralysis—here I trust it is another kind of paralysis too—I so appreciate that you are giving voice to the people are "tearing off the thread and rising!"
Oh, i think "need to be written," indeed! I share your quandary. And draw, quite regularly, on the words of Eduardo Galeano who, in his essay "In Defense of the Word" - equal parts lament and argument - writes: "The oppressor does not want the mirror to reflect anything to the oppressed but its quicksilver surface. What process of change can activate a people that doesn't know who it is, nor from whence it comes? If it doesn't know who it is, how can it know what it deserves to become?" Watching with outrage and amazement at the resistance of Minneapolitans, it seems to me that we are seeing a people "activated" as Galeano suggests. Also, there's Grace Paley's poem "Responsibility" which i've been meaning to make into a poster: https://dissentmagazine.org/article/what-we-must-do-grace-paley-poems/. So, yes, write, write, write!
Thank you, Michael (and Padraig). I love Michael's language and imagery, the beautiful bringing to life of those great Greek twins, Sleep and Death, but it is the first line that is the gut punch. "We live in the numbness // of an occupied city..." HOW DO WE HAVE AN OCCUPIED CITY? Like so many, I just feel sick. And stunned. And betrayed. And angry. I keep rolling a line from Amanda Gorman's poem "For Alex Jeffrey Pretti" around in my head, "Know that to care intensively, // united, is to carry both pain-dark horror for today // & a profound, daring hope for tomorrow." I keep ratcheting up my commitment to myself to try to hold to wisdom and to love well in every direction, but I confess I sometimes do not know exactly what that looks like. And sometimes, I just fail.
I feel ya Lynn. "I keep ratcheting up my commitment to myself to try to hold to wisdom and to love well in every direction, but I confess I sometimes do not know exactly what that looks like. And sometimes, I just fail" I'm right there with you doing the same.
I’d love to know: What do you take from the poem — its poetics, its message to you, its form, its craft, something else?
I read the poem from Oksana Maksymchuk first and then came here to the Substack to read Pádraig’s offering for the week. What a one-two punch. Maybe a slap to the side of the head, to the morning, long before dawn. Each morning, I wake to a feeling of dread and it takes a while to take off the covers and go to meet the day.
Michael Bazzett’s poem speaks in almost a dream-like, half awake quality as the reality sets in and jars you to reality. Really, so does Arguments for Peace.
I am tired, like many are tired but they both say in slightly different ways, don’t turn over, don’t go to sleep, awaken and help in some way. First, please just see and then find a way to help. Don’t look away from us.
Thank you for the introduction to Michael Bazzett- his work was not on my radar. First impressions.
His poem feels as if it’s guided by a fiercely intentional lyric pacing, where enjambment (one of my favorite techniques!!) is masterfully employed, and hesitation becomes meaning. The poem moves the way half-sleep does: lucid, drifting, unsettled. Another thing that intrigues me is the idea of permanence as delusion, especially “a story that believes itself / to be permanent (an odd word, / because nothing is).” That line feels like the poem’s moral axis. Dawn arrives not as revelation but residue, “the pale grey / mop-water of its light,” and by the end, waking itself becomes the true nightmare. The poem offers no easy resolution (which, again, I love… this reflection of our reality). Very moving commentary on this moment.
Thank you so much for sharing this 🙏 Synchronicity surely stitches us together in times like this. Just yesterday I referenced the film “Death Takes A Holiday” and today I’m reading this poem. The universe is listening and that is a permanence to rejoice in💜
Thank you for sharing this beautiful poem. Two images strike my heart: “where every story has another // story curled inside its labyrinth”. And “a story that is somehow // made of white light // bent and glaring to illuminate // what happened, then tell you // it did not happen.” Curious that both evoke stories and storytelling. A story as truth and/or stories being weaponized as lies. I’ve been riveted by the brave and selfless souls bearing witness in Minneapolis. This poem knits together so many impressions and emotions.
'Pale grey mop water'- only those who mop recognise that colour. And that's the thing that stands out for me in the face of the mess we deal with im whichever country we are (UK for me).
The way to face it each morning is get up give your head a wobble and carry on mopping, or as the OlD Testament prophet Micah said it: 'to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly.'
"give your head a wobble and carry on mopping..." Yes!
Yes, indeed! And thanks Steve, for the lines from Micah...
That verse has guided me (or tried to) since I heard it in a retreat many years ago. I love your "give your head a wobble and carry on mopping"...so necessary but oh so challenging. Thank you
As a Minneapolitan abroad, I am losing my mind, and I am so grateful (yes, somehow, grateful) for the artful writers who draw me in to the nightmare most of my beloveds are waking to every morning. Thank you, Michael.
These letters, from other local poets and writers, are also beautiful and evocative and important. They echo one another and this poem in eerie and convicting ways: https://lithub.com/tag/letter-from-minnesota/
I've been reading, & sharing, them. They're necessary.
Thank you for the link. I will check it out.
In the bleak reality that Michael sets down in his poem, these lines in particular expose for me the double-edged power of stories:
“… It is a story that believes itself
to be permanent (an odd word,
because nothing is),
a story that is somehow
made of white light
bent and glaring to illuminate
what happened, then tell you
it did not happen…”
Stories can be forced on us, try to make us believe that things are this way, not that way; that what was true is no longer true; and that the storytellers themselves are the only ones who can save us. This has been the case since Plato’s fearful people believed the shadows on the cave walls instead of the reality outside, since Orwell’s “Newspeak” tried to control people’s very thought and mode of expression, right up to the “post-truth” society we now find ourselves in.
And yet, therein lies the positive power of stories, because we can refuse those stories forced on us and hold onto the belief that we can make – and remake – our own stories and, in the process, remake our world.
As you yourself once said, Padraig, ““We need stories of belonging that move us towards each other, not from each other; ways of being human that open up the possibilities of being alive together; ways of navigating our differences that deepen our curiosity, that deepen our friendship, that deepen our capacity to disagree, that deepen the argument of being alive. This is what we need. This is what will save us. This is the work of peace. This is the work of imagination.”
Yes, yes, Michael's notion of stories "curled" in stories struck me immediately. I've always seen stories as both way more powerful than we tend to think and way more tricky. The tendency to romanticize stories disappears the destructive capacities of stories. Behind every genocide are stories that both organize people's understandings and mobilize those malevolent understandings into violence. But less than that evil extreme are the countless daily stories that try and sell us on the world of power (unjustly wielded) and tyranny. Stories have the power (primal?) both to destroy and to create. I suppose I would distinguish between the stories of the Tyrant and the Defiant. Tyranny produces only propaganda. The Defiant make art.
"The Defiant make art" - love that, Chris!!
I'm with you, Anne. That's powerful, Chris!
That's a distinction worth pondering, Chris - thank you.
Also, as a way to build my own resilience at the moment, I’m finding consolation and uplift in certain dance music tracks, like this powerful spoken-word one from Duke Dumont and Tony Walsh called “It Feels Like This”:
“They try to divide us but find that inside us
A light that's so bright that it lights up to guide us
It's joyful, it's hopeful, it's vital, it's vocal
It's openly woken me, totally soulful
And we love, and we hope, and we dream, and we dare
And it sparks in the dark in the air that we share
And call it an energy, call it a vibe
Call it a spirit, we share it inside…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL1FKaWXniw&list=RDyL1FKaWXniw&start_radio=1
The rhythm and words of that spoken word are energising and inspiring.
Now you've got me wondering. At what point might a story morph in to a myth. OR, Myth is a story, maybe or not based on physical provable reality, yet comes completely alive in the heart and soul of humans. That which speaks louder than "reality" is the story we're making...
Absolutely Georgena! Carl Jung's work on myth and psyche is fascinating - I love the line in this article that says "‘Once upon a time’ does not mean ‘once’ in history but refers to events that occur in eternal time, always and everywhere..." https://www.cgjungny.org/myth-and-psyche/
Anne, you very eloquently said exactly what struck me the strongest in this important poem. Thank you for saying it better then I ever could.
That's so kind of you, Dawn!
My motto is The shortest bridge between us is a story, and I mean a personal story, because we are seeing the damage of stories made up to keep the status quo, frighten us or control us. I think about how we once sat around the hearth and shared stories. I love the idea of "stories of belonging that move us toward each other."
Thank you, Anne... This is beautifully put.
Thank you, Michael, for your courage in bearing witness to the atrocities you are living. I am so inspired by the stories of how people in Minneapolis are supporting each other right now, whether through peaceful protest or caring for those being hunted. I hope you are all able to find a way to resource yourselves at this time. In the words of Audre Lorde: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation and that is an act of political warfare..."
Beautiful poem. I wish it had never needed to be written.
It feels like we are sleepwalking. That we are watch in things unfolding in front of us in a way that seems unreal, like a waking nightmare that we can not wake from. In the way the poem is almost hypnotic in its structure.
Yes! like before we know it the Constitution will be revised to legitimize horrendous take-over of the masses by the few. AI will make the masses unnecessary. How to thin the herd? Will USA collapse to trigger or join global bankruptcy? Where is Hope now?
For me the poem captures some of the ‘topsy turvy’ nature of what is happening in Minneapolis. Nothing is as it seems, the gaslighting astronomical and tales being spun to cover lies and confuse the narrative. As a Canadian neighbour who grew up in apartheid South Africa I am troubled to witness members of our human family being treated this way ❤️ thank you Michael for articulating the pain
MINNESOTA "nice"
Like fiddlehead ferns,
stories inside stories unfurl
from crowns underground
Green shoots up
through dirty ice,
growing into new patches on the land where the waters
reflect the sky,
Mni Sóta Makoce.
lovely
Thank you, David
I found the 4 line pattern with those breaks landing in the middle of sentences/thoughts correctly jarring. Maybe even reminiscent of dreams that you wake up in the middle of, and then may struggle to resume. Or nightmares that you wake up in the middle of and then are thrust back into when Sleep wins out again.
I could have seen "a story" be "The Story" as it plays a similarly prominent role in the poem to Sleep and Death and all things that you are either on the inside or outside of with very different implications. And while nothing is permanent, the community that this poem represents is the closest thing to permanent, though it does require continual upkeep and care. Sleep will end. Death, while permanent for the person who dies, you could argue is not permanent for those around that person. A person's death fades away as concentric circles of community and family forget not the person, but the specifics of receiving and reacting to the news of their Death.
Death coming on holiday is also an interesting construct, but feels so familiar and does, correctly, capture that this is a choice for the occupiers, and that for the occupied this is something to survive because it's not forever, it will end.
Matt, wonderful analysis. Your point about “a story” versus “The Story” is fascinating. Also intrigued by the idea of Death being on holiday as a choice, especially from the occupiers’ perspective, that resonates deeply. It carries both absurdity and indictment. And your thought about how death fades outward in concentric circles is haunting and true.
Thank you!
The way you describe the structure of this poem like a dream that you wake up in the middle of is so interesting. Especially considering the content, which has that frozen feeling of nightmares.
To me this poem feels like a message and a warning, “From Minneapolis…” to everyone out there. This can happen here. It can happen anywhere. Just like our dreams can communicate hurt and foreshadow consequences we maybe haven't yet realized in our waking lives, this poem reads like a warning both from a very specific time and place and from somewhere greater, a beyond place that deals in such matters of truth and flourishing.
What a blessing to see the work read in this way, Matt - thank you.
It's a great poem, thanks for it.
indeed
Michael, thank you for writing this poem, and Pádraig, thank you for sharing. I have a poem or several inside me to write about these times, but it seems too terrible to write (that is a sign that it need to be written?). As one who grew up as a neighbors to MN, and where my dear daughter now lives, the events there are on my mind a large portion of every day. I write from a place of privilege and relative safety for now, but that could change in a moment for me or any of us.
The poem’s grey mop-water is also the grey of the sky and the old snow of Northern winters. Fresh snow falls and stays, as it is too cold to melt, and is sullied by the traffic, just as the people are now sullied by the occupiers. The grey mop-water is also a color that is to me the affect of having to live daily in disbelief…and fear.
Those of us who live after the death of a close one wake up after sleeping, and just for a moment, things were as they were before the death, but reality soon punches us in the gut. The waking is hard.
While those who wish us to stay sleeping may try to sew us down with scarlet thread, I see and read of everyday people tearing off the thread and rising! Their persistence brings me an example and hope. The spring sun’s warmth will melt the ice and snow.
Pádraig, looking forward to seeing you Monday in DC.
That grey mop water sky is so reminiscent of grieving a loved one, those days of grey fatigue that seem as if they could set you in stone. We're in our short lived snow days in NC right now, and that sky is here. I suspect a sky like this might always be a reminder of this poem and these days of our Minnesotan brothers and sisters. The water that is snow, that has been everywhere before here, reminds me that we are everyone, somehow also particles there. I recommit again to hold the light through the darkness stronger than yesterday.
Karen, thank you - you are touching on what this poem evoked in me, too. That feeling upon waking where you are punched in the viscera by the heaviness of grief, heartbreak, and fear that somehow sleep delivered you from... like a little death. And yes, the images Michael uses of being sewn to the mattress remind me of sleep paralysis—here I trust it is another kind of paralysis too—I so appreciate that you are giving voice to the people are "tearing off the thread and rising!"
This nudged me to recall there is a long tradition of sewing treasured valuables (values) in mattresses, for safekeeping. Keeping safe.
Oh, i think "need to be written," indeed! I share your quandary. And draw, quite regularly, on the words of Eduardo Galeano who, in his essay "In Defense of the Word" - equal parts lament and argument - writes: "The oppressor does not want the mirror to reflect anything to the oppressed but its quicksilver surface. What process of change can activate a people that doesn't know who it is, nor from whence it comes? If it doesn't know who it is, how can it know what it deserves to become?" Watching with outrage and amazement at the resistance of Minneapolitans, it seems to me that we are seeing a people "activated" as Galeano suggests. Also, there's Grace Paley's poem "Responsibility" which i've been meaning to make into a poster: https://dissentmagazine.org/article/what-we-must-do-grace-paley-poems/. So, yes, write, write, write!
Thank you, Michael (and Padraig). I love Michael's language and imagery, the beautiful bringing to life of those great Greek twins, Sleep and Death, but it is the first line that is the gut punch. "We live in the numbness // of an occupied city..." HOW DO WE HAVE AN OCCUPIED CITY? Like so many, I just feel sick. And stunned. And betrayed. And angry. I keep rolling a line from Amanda Gorman's poem "For Alex Jeffrey Pretti" around in my head, "Know that to care intensively, // united, is to carry both pain-dark horror for today // & a profound, daring hope for tomorrow." I keep ratcheting up my commitment to myself to try to hold to wisdom and to love well in every direction, but I confess I sometimes do not know exactly what that looks like. And sometimes, I just fail.
I feel ya Lynn. "I keep ratcheting up my commitment to myself to try to hold to wisdom and to love well in every direction, but I confess I sometimes do not know exactly what that looks like. And sometimes, I just fail" I'm right there with you doing the same.
I am struck by how essential poetry has become. Even old poems have a deeper resonance. This is a brave and beautiful statement of the human spirit.
So true Larry, they are life blood these days.
The last two lines sum up the reality of this moment - despair. The dawns early light is not bringing hope just yet.
I’d love to know: What do you take from the poem — its poetics, its message to you, its form, its craft, something else?
I read the poem from Oksana Maksymchuk first and then came here to the Substack to read Pádraig’s offering for the week. What a one-two punch. Maybe a slap to the side of the head, to the morning, long before dawn. Each morning, I wake to a feeling of dread and it takes a while to take off the covers and go to meet the day.
Michael Bazzett’s poem speaks in almost a dream-like, half awake quality as the reality sets in and jars you to reality. Really, so does Arguments for Peace.
I am tired, like many are tired but they both say in slightly different ways, don’t turn over, don’t go to sleep, awaken and help in some way. First, please just see and then find a way to help. Don’t look away from us.
Thank you for the introduction to Michael Bazzett- his work was not on my radar. First impressions.
His poem feels as if it’s guided by a fiercely intentional lyric pacing, where enjambment (one of my favorite techniques!!) is masterfully employed, and hesitation becomes meaning. The poem moves the way half-sleep does: lucid, drifting, unsettled. Another thing that intrigues me is the idea of permanence as delusion, especially “a story that believes itself / to be permanent (an odd word, / because nothing is).” That line feels like the poem’s moral axis. Dawn arrives not as revelation but residue, “the pale grey / mop-water of its light,” and by the end, waking itself becomes the true nightmare. The poem offers no easy resolution (which, again, I love… this reflection of our reality). Very moving commentary on this moment.
Thank you so much for sharing this 🙏 Synchronicity surely stitches us together in times like this. Just yesterday I referenced the film “Death Takes A Holiday” and today I’m reading this poem. The universe is listening and that is a permanence to rejoice in💜
Thank you for sharing this beautiful poem. Two images strike my heart: “where every story has another // story curled inside its labyrinth”. And “a story that is somehow // made of white light // bent and glaring to illuminate // what happened, then tell you // it did not happen.” Curious that both evoke stories and storytelling. A story as truth and/or stories being weaponized as lies. I’ve been riveted by the brave and selfless souls bearing witness in Minneapolis. This poem knits together so many impressions and emotions.