MAGNETO EYES STRANGE FRUIT

Out for a midnight flight, I see
two children on the playground—

the rust of blood crusting
over holes in their heads.

Their brown bodies dance
like marionettes, tangled

in the swings. “Mutie”
is scrawled across the cardboard

that hangs from their swollen necks,
the chains wrapped tight enough to tear.

I imagine what they did,
maybe the ability to turn glass into sand,

to hear rustled leaves as words,
something simple, something

humans kill for. I reach out,
close the girl’s eyes, and suddenly

I want to rip every man out of his home,
make each one burn, reverse

the earth’s rotation, rupture the core
and tear this planet inside out,

only so they can know how it feels.
It’s been so long since I’ve taught people

how to fear, since I’ve razed their cities,
bent steel and split iron into handfuls

of dust, but someone must be
the villain for the dead.

- Gary Jackson, from Missing You, Metropolis, aka the book I just discovered that is BLOWING MY ENTIRE MIND