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.