Bread and Circus – a poem by Todd Clouser

South of the imaginary lines
where the uniformed and ironed men and and women that look like boys and girls, skin on the face still soft,
wear their gloves and glasses
bad men are winning the imaginary wars they’ve begun so they could win them

Jhosivani put his feet to the ground he slept on at morning
dark toes and light palms
the merry go round Earth
4 kilometers down the wild vein roads cut between
the complete canvas greens where his cousins and father and Uncles cut and culled beauty

The politicians here are the heroes they tell you, photos of feeding young Indian women and boys, places they would never go if not for the photograph
to the bus and the signs, where there are, look cheap and weathered but the women are still pretty, he was wise enough to not love them

And after they cut them down,

People paid attention for a while, they wrote and made videos and sold them
Until the wicked came
with Bread and Circus
Bread and Circus for the City

Jhosivani has no numbers or cards in banks or machines, he exists because his heart does
his mother still loves him with loud command on the baby city green ride to the schools that might take him somewhere someday

Today he was reading stories of revolutions and dignity, the wind blows the page corners through the bus windows
He is adding numbers with his fingers while the taxis turn and the sun crawls from its sleep

The government is letting the grass grow tall between school and town
On streets named after people they surely would murder

The governor’s men shot and burned Jhosivani’s friends, if you believe their story, the boys he slept next to and one time, by the whistle trees, sang a song about Christmas
He asks about justice and most of the women he wanted to love disappear

When they shot them up,

People paid attention for a while
Until the wicked came
With Bread and Circus
Bread and Circus for the City