A row of large cubes is set up in a road.
Two men walk out from between the large cubes.
You have to stop here.
And wonder

How the words are set up like cubes
In a line in the road like cubes.
Two women walk out from between the large cubes
And wonder.

You have to stop here.
You don’t have to stop here.
Just yesterday, they caught two young children
With explosives

Hiding in the cubes.
It makes people angry.
It makes the men and the women on either side
Of the words angry.

It makes the cubes angry.
They heat black squares in the dirt below them.
(The men take the defective cubes
And turn them on their sides.)

It makes the cubes angry.
Hiding in the words
Two more children, explosiveless
Heat black squares in the dirt below them.

A stray cube flies in from the sky.
It levels one of the men.
It makes the words angry.
The women turn on their sides

And heat black squares from the inside.
It makes the children angry
And the cubes run on their legs
Through the page.

You have to stop here.
You have to keep going.
The words are black roads

And the men and children come from the women.

Let me know what you see

This poem was one of the winners of the 2011 “Discovery” Poetry Contest.