A patriot
has the duty
to salute. Stand at every
anthem. Rifle
at the ready.
Now begin to count the
stripes & stars
stitched into your lapel.
Say the bars are a lucky
13—a paean of
ups and downs,
an elevator
that brings you closer
to a floor that’s never there,
on every blue-moon
Friday of the year.
Know one is indeed
the loneliest number
of all, locked inside a sun,
that everyone around it
looks the same—
there, in a hunter
riding shotgun
in Dakota—North
and South;
and here, on the ice
in Minnesota,
the fish of 10,000
lakes (yes-yes, off by
eighteen-forty-
two).
See, what’s excessive
doesn’t rate its own
existence, rounded off
like sands &
grains, with nowhere
that can hold them,
that if a galaxy
blinks & goes,
you’d have no
idea at all
that it was there.
In Mercy, Alabama,
Quinton Mills
was struck from behind
by a truck.
There was one-less
that was listed
on the U-Haul sign next day,
the village population
stuck on six-hundred
ninety-three,
without a painter
or a paint-
brush to be
found,
none to sew the
sadness
on the mortician’s
callous face.
Andreas Gripp
January 13, 2025
Andreas Gripp
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