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.
