2 poems by Justin Hyde

che

your ideology
may have been misguided

but sitting here writing
writing writing

i feel like sartre
who also envied
your action.

first they drew straws
and made your assassination
in that little bolivian schoolhouse
look like a battle wound
by shooting you
in the throat

some fucking cia officer
stole your watch

then they
cut your hands off
stored them in formaldehyde
for fingerprint analysis
and dumped you
in an
unmarked grave.

forty years later
i'd like to report
you've become an immortal martyr
for the cause

but unfortunately
the same
yankee capitalists
who snuffed you out
posthumously
reduced you
to a
hollow
ubiquitous
t-shirt.

© Justin Hyde

 
the leaves are beginning to fall here in iowa

most of us
whittle our thumbs
as the spider blinks

ad infinitum

a pulsating fulcrum

the unicorn dream.

there is coffee
running down the
truck-stop wall

my ceramic cup
in jagged pieces
on the floor.

i don't know
what came over me,
i tell the frightened waitress
with dumb blue
eyes.

© Justin Hyde