[Julie Steiner]

Evolution (parts 5-6 of many)

5.

Assembling mobs that lust to lynch
is a cinch.
Just identify a
pariah,
and soon a festive, restive crowd’s uniting.
A bandwagon’s exciting.
The lonely, weak, and insecure are drawn
to pile on.

And those of us not lonely, weak,
and insecure are rare. (At times, unique.)


[Final line was:]
and insecure are few. Infrequent. Freak.

6.

One of those unique
characters with the character to speak
above scapegoating’s siren-call
was Abel Meeropol.

His son, whose chore it was to mow their lawn,
said scores of maple-spawn
each spring were spared,
since Abel cared
so much for lives at risk, he’d rescue
seedlings from the blade that cut the fescue.

“But there are hundreds, Dad,” the kid protested
when Abel arrested
the mower,
making the chore much slower.
“We cannot save them all.”

But Mr. Meeropol
never thought it futile
to not be brutal.

Re-homed in coffee cans,
rows and rows of saplings wrapped the man’s
house within a writhing hedge,
living on the edge.

Both Abel’s sons were transplants, too—uprooted
when their first mom and dad were tried and executed
as spies.
Few now realize
that the bard who wrote what Billie sang
about the fruit that used to hang
in Southern poplar trees
bravely adopted these
six- and ten-year-old Rosenberg boys
while Joe McCarthy led a choir of noise.

Some words slow mowers’ action.
Some deeds make deadly juggernauts lose traction,
and bandwagons unstable.

And so might we, so far as we are Abel.

[Andrew Frisardi]

#5 feels like part of the series but #6 seems like another poem. The series so far has consisted of one-two punches. #6 is a prolix narrative that moralizes without an ironic twist.

Would cutting it back work? I tried this:

Abel Meeropol cared
so much for lives at risk, he’d rescue
seedlings from the blade that cut the fescue.

He
never thought it futile
to not be brutal.

Re-homed in coffee cans,
rows and rows of saplings wrapped the man’s
house within a writhing hedge,
living on the edge.

Some words slow mowers’ action.
Some deeds make deadly juggernauts lose traction,
and bandwagons unstable.

And so might we, so far as we are Abel.

In #5, btw, wouldn’t “Freak” have to be plural in that context?

“Fescue” is #6 is great. I had to look it up. In general in this sequence, I’ve been enjoying the surprise incursions of fancy words.

[Julie Steiner]

Thanks, Andrew. I was worried that #6 would be too much of a departure from what came before, and you've confirmed that. I'll stick to the short snark and surprises.