13 Questions for the Next Economy

by Susan Briante

On the side of the road, white cardboard in the shape of a man,
            illegible script. A signpost with scrawl: Will pay cash for diabetes strips.

A system under the system with its black box.         Disability hearing?
a billboard reads. Trouble with Social Security? Where does the riot begin?

Spark of dry grass, Russian thistle in flames, or butterflies bobbing
as if pulled by unseen strings          through the alleyway.

My mother's riot would have been peace. A bicycle wheel
            chained to a concrete planter. What metaphor

            can I use to describe the children sleeping in cages in detention
centers? Bird pushed fenceward by a breeze? A train of brake lights

extending? Mesquite pods mill under our feet
on a rainless sidewalk. What revolution          will my daughter feed?

A break-the-state twig-quick snap or a long divining          as if
for water? A cotton silence? A death?          Who will read this

in the next economy, the one that comes after the one that kills us?
What lessons will we take from the side of the road? A wooden crucifix,

a white bicycle, a pinwheel, a poem, ICE
waiting to be redacted:            Which would you cross out?