POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS the glass and steel tower
where I live since it razed a donut shop and bodega gone with the
turn
of a century that is REFORZADO REINFORCED yellow plastic remnants
made by Empire not to fray into bangs I heard last night three or
four
CAUTION CUIDADO CAUTION pops at two in the morning the dreaming
hour no concern of mine until I got the LINE from my super that a 17-year-old
boy
DO NOT CROSS was shot in the head D.O.A. another white outline settled
in the dust of so many fallen to the ground what if the chalked specters rose to
LINE
up the POLICE what if we could see how many DO NOT ENTER history
died in that one spot how would this crime scene look with all the CAUTION used
up for
tape my block a yellow web
the dead too thick to CROSS
Sarah Key has had poems published in Poet Lore, Naugatuck River Review, InPatient Press, Solares Hill, Poetry Nook Magazine, Truck, Enizagam, Kaleidoscope, and the anthology My Cruel Invention. She has studied at Cave Canem with Eduardo Corral and in master workshops with Sharon Dolin and Jeanne Marie Beaumont. She has authored eight cookbooks, including a series called the Hollywood Hotplates, Serendipity Sundaes, and Serendipity Parties. Currently, she has eight essays on The Huffington Post. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sarah-key/) and edited the 2014 encyclopedic cookbook Gusto: The Very Best of Italian Food and Cuisine. She is privileged to work as a writing tutor at a community college in the Bronx where she learns from her students.