Poetry by Aden Mandel

Olive skin

A mix of black and white too stubborn to conform to grey

Keep running

Oppression diverges into two pasts:

One of chains that held their wrists now bullets who go through those who wear them;

Cotton pickers but now some can’t afford shirts

Keep running

The other of gasses withering throats and broken glass and hiding and now living in their homeland is theft;

Big noses and curly hair stole money from white, innocent hands

Keep running

Keep running (away from your past)

Keep running (to your future, yourself)

into your olive skin.

Disintegrating

a man sits on a red chair,

his pupils weak/dull with age

and his cheeks wrinkled

the chair decided to be

frugal and indecisive so it

has one board sticking straight up, a little slanted

and another cutting it horizontally, in half

to stay on, his feet push against the whitewashed floor, bracing himself as his pinky toes start disintegrating

he feels his little molecules floating out the air holes in his shoes — “I’m crumbling”

he’s screaming into an empty room: nothing. just the faces in crowds of busy, better

and the woman behind him whispers

it’s only schizophrenia