Popping Off, a poem

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Fire through the underbrush

Charcoal fuel in all the dead and dying

We spark into an inferno

More terrifying than Dante could imagine

We weigh our and their souls judiciously

Against an eagle feather

Then in a voice not quite human,

The old ones who smell like asbestos

And fish guts answer

Isn’t it supposed to be blind?

Justice lashes out in the streets and

Law and Order loads a big stick-gun

With a suspicious kind of precision

Maybe this time it’ll be different

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Zach Levin is a Junior at Georgetown University studying International Politics.