ARSENAL 

Yesterday was beautiful; today is thick & stagnant:

hurricanes threaten communities from Kitty Hawk to Nantucket –

all low-lying areas are evacuated. 

I seek alternatives (routes & pathways previously discredited)

& I understand the efficacy of Harriet Tubman’s oft-brandished

pearl-handled pistol: you go on or you die, she promised,

every wavering runaway slave committed to her care.

Were it left to me, I’d lie down in any available ditch, forever.

(I’m unequal parts postures & approximation – an attractive,

illegible sign.) But it isn’t, I’m not exclusively my own.

—-

Rangi McNeil is a native of Laurinburg, North Carolina. He earned a BA in history from Rice University and his MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts. He is the author of Occasional Poems and The Missing.