I am the head busted open

with the pipe wrench, the one written

about in the police briefs on grey

paper that will yellow soon

and curl at the edges like a new rug,

looking by most standards old

and quite familiar. I am the white

men running from the bar

into the parking lot where two black men

have broken into a jeep.

I am the prepositional pile-up

it takes to describe that scene:

men drag the chains of themselves

across the ripples in the partition glass

to teach a lesson to thieves.

I am of this, in the night,

for the people from the city

where I have lived for so long—that.

I praise the cops in the wisdom

of their arrival—I am the pipe wrench

unwitted and the hands that use it.

I am the cop asking whose wrench,

the calculated answer: not ours.

                                                        —Cal Freeman