Patrick Hansel

Breathe We Must

I can’t breathe
I can’t breathe

What other three words
spark such terror?                              

The novel virus scars             
the alveoli of the old
and the torn

The knee crushes
the windpipe
of a prostrate man

The smoke of looted
candy bars and motor oil
pummels a disposable neighborhood

I can’t breathe
I can’t breathe

Take out the last “e”
and the verb vanishes
into the air

Take out a man
and the city spasms
into fiery dark

Take out a loan
buy your family’s first store
and watch it explode it flames

Take out a grandfather
on a stretcher, a lover, a child
and never see them

again

I can’t breathe
We can’t breathe

breathe we must

On the Kill Line

It was the one hog out
of twenty that didn’t get
knocked out by the gas,
that came to the knife man
thrashing.  All pigs squeal
their deaths, but this one,
hung by the hind legs
with an iron chain and dragged
along the relentless belt,
this hog, this one had a face
that summoned the gravest need
out of the man standing
in blood, cutting throat
after throat after throat,
it called forth the ancient hunger
encrusted in the DNA
of his gut: kill or be killed,
survive with your teeth
and hands, teeth and hands
that had not long before
been fang and claw,
remnants of a time
when this man’s ancestors
had been eaten by this pig’s
kind.  Kindness is not a face
that death prefers.  The kindest
thing the man could do for
the pig was to slash quick
and bold and deep.  Blood
is no baptism to linger under:
the next beast arrives in
seconds, his throat a paycheck,
a blessing, a curse.