trained on all the trash cans in our city

street: his commitment to surveillance

is surpassed only by his commitment

to record-keeping: he reports what he records

to the city’s enforcement officer (the man

in charge of trash crimes like making deposits

in the wrong person’s can: like not recycling

past lives: like leaving outtakes of your

self stacked and rotting at the curb’s edge)

another neighbor has a camera trained on

the first neighbor, who reported him for poor trash

can placement: neighbor #2 also makes notes

about those who dare to walk

along our street, which is a cul-de-sac—#2’s camera

catches anyone who appears to be

considering public urination, or consumption

of stolen thoughts: also anyone in possession

of untypical (for our neighborhood) hats, or

genders, or pigmentation

while #2 records every body in potential

acts, in photographic delicto, in private

expressions of grief, or despair: while he pins

those he has othered as specimens

to the styrofoam of his avid hippocampus

all the while, #1 is deep in his numbered

lists, checking names against every ordinance

every offence against the city, against the piss-filled

moat of his outrage: these men are enemies

connected wirelessly by hope: that someday

at dawn, the garbage collectors will break down

their neighbors’ doors, bind and blindfold

the “human” trash, bundle them

toward the incinerators—

while #1 and #2 prepare themselves to be

perfect servants of annihilation

I walk out of my building, pinned

by intersecting angles of scrutiny: I feel my name

scratched onto a list, feel the drag of history

follow me into the street, into the city

that I call home.