A Thread by Benjamin Brindise

There is a thread running through America

Between ground beef and hamburger buns
around bowls of macaroni salad and lakes
lined with houses rich people own
and still rent to ghosts of the middle class

Woven into Stars and Stripes, like
a wick leading to fireworks on the 4th of July
It’s the hair in your slice of apple pie
Sewn into smallpox blankets to cover up

A thread that leads to an end tied around
the trigger of a gun
aimed directly
at ourselves

Benjamin Brindise is the author of Rotten Kid (Ghost City Press, Spring 2017) and a Teaching Artist at the Just Buffalo Literary Center. He has most recently been published or accepted for publication in the My Next Heart: New Buffalo Poetry anthology, The Magnitizdat Literary, Foundlings, Page & Spine, Ghost City Review, and Peach Mag among others.