David Huntington is managing web editor at SpittoonCollective.com. His work is published or forthcoming in the likes of Spittoon Literary Magazine, Literary Hub, and Post Road; his screenplay ‘New Violence’ was selected for the 2018 Middlebury Script Lab.

 

May the Smuggler

 

One day I simply awoke

         within an enemy—

 

         Even to crouch home

         would be a crime.

 

The trees pummeled the air.

The merchants spoke in accusations—

 

         I gave an urchin boy my native coin, he said:

 

                 Only the emperor

                 is permitted cartography.

 

         I said I trespass not by will:

         But in the deeper will of sleep, they took me.

 

                 Wisemen pray to the syndicate,

                                                   he said.

 

         That’s the word these days.

Around this town I wandered a river

 

saddled by a bridge

of whitish stone and righteous.

 

The whole day and none crossed, though

arched so pure and paramount.

 

         I feigned interest with a cobbler,

         asked: Must not there be some other road?

 

         But his foreign language only rang

         like intonations of my name—

 

Were they on to me?

But of course they were.

 

The tall grass shown like mackerel.

         All the townsfolks’ eyes were hidden from me.

 

         Night had fallen: An unwelcomed traveler

         is made into a prowler.

 

         Lapping moonlight from a puddle,

         I cursed the will who willed me so

 

and envied the hearthlit silhouettes.

All men do not wake equal . . .

 

         The bridge was silent

         and wholly blue.

 

         I knew not to which land it crossed, only,

         that I looked too like a villain here.

 

                   And so I tried the crossing.

                   Swiftly, then slowly—

                   The old stone slabs were magnificent and true.

 

                   It was then the river saw me, a stranger—

                   its currents coiled

                            and waters arraigned!

 

         Blindfolded and beaten, took.

         I was not righteous; they were not wrong.

 

As the townsfolk wrote my sentence,

I knew there had never been hope.

 

We see green only

when the snake wills it.

 

          They say:

                    Wisemen pray to the syndicate.

 

Now in my cell that is all I do:

Scratch dates in the walls

 

and as sleep descends, utter:

May the smuggler steal me home.