Act
Don’t turn your face away.
Once you’ve seen, you can no longer act like you don’t know.
Open your eyes to the truth. It’s all around you.
Don’t deny what the eyes to your soul have revealed to you.
Vashti Quiroz-Vega
bundled in blankets
sleeping on a mattress
of corrugated cardboard
wearing heavy clothes
even when the television prophet
predicts hot steamy weather
and exhorts listeners to drink
water, stay cool
in the morning the blanket
folded into a square
packed
into a grocery cart
and pushed down the street
to a square of concrete
a sun the size of a quarter
illuminates a handheld sign
hungry in black letters
homeless in block print
tonight
the blankets
stay in the cart
is it time
to act
