by Tuttle, Dan;
palm-sized Tricorders high as sign-groups mixed,
appropriately mobile and, too, celled.
Stel saw a waiflike figure float through each,
albino pale with arctic eyes, no sign.
She chatted with whoever was in reach
and after thirty seconds turned to line
her selfie-stick with new group at her back.
She smiled and spoke into her blouse-clip mic
and so to HD video unpack
what being in the protest there was like.
She gathered, gathered, gathered, spoke, and spoke,
beamed stories up to YouTube to provoke.
56.
An amped-up Cade struck conversation with
the group they’d ended up amid, and soon
brought Stella into dialogue. “…each fifth?
Fo’ sho’, we’re there,” he said to opportune
recurrent invitation to cabal
relating to a thing Stel hadn’t caught.
Emboldened by the friendliness she saw,
Stel asked girl wearing paisley-print culottes
a nutshell version of her story. She
detailed enthusiastically, with warmth,
then introduced herself as Tula, ‘Tee’
to friends, insistent from that point thenceforth
Stel call her by the latter name. “My mom
reserves the long one for my firebombs.”
57.
Tee winked, and Stella didn’t know if to
believe oblique suggestion Molotov
lay on the table was a prescient clue
to where this might end up. A chapeau mauve
fell off a neighbor’s head and into Stel,
as jacaranda blossoms did when wind
in youth balled zephyrs into season’s swells
that left the trees of richest purples skinned.
She held it out for owner, who said, “Thanks,
I’m Mona,” flashing eyes whose smiling lines
ran deep enough to put her in the ranks
of those whose nature’s to be beacons, shined
for strangers in the darkness, all without
a conscious effort to draw others out.
58.
That aura lasted past when gaze moved on
and Mona turned to talk with friend whose sign
was on a glossy whiteboard, letters drawn
that said: “So many juvenile, maligned,
destabilizing policies have come
I had to buy a protest sign I could
reuse.” Its holder pierced all near eardrums
with protest chants too loud to be withstood.
When Mona tapped friend to converse, she ceased
to give Stel full attention. Stella heard
the two comparing how they’d been policed
more civilly this time. Friend said, “What spurred
the Black Lives Matter crackdown was when fools
like anarchists came in and broke the rules.
59.
It’s clear in modern hist’ry civil acts
of protest when sustained can lead to change.
Once peace is broken, po’ overreacts
and threatened powers clamp down on broad campaigns.
It’s key they still stay structured, on-point, to
maintain a culture in the protest group
attuned to this, and active—” “‘Key’ says you!”
jibed Mona, wink at Stel, as if this loop
of logic had been circulated lots
of times before and she sought soft reprieve.
The friend got hint but looked tied up in knots
at choking down the narrative she’d weaved.
She spotted Stella’s stare and changed to whom
she spoke, continuing, “Each one’s assumed
60.
to take responsibility if what
she sees is likely to bring violence.
This type of tactic’s also shown to cut
street homicide—” “Beware, her sky opens
and rain just won’t stop pouring,” Mona laughed.
Throng’s density made sardines of her friends:
she introduced girls pressed to fore and aft.
“Benita, this is Stella. Stella, Ben.”
“Or Benny,” Ben corrected. “Benny, now?”
Benita nodded gravely. “So it goes.”
“It’s nice to meet you Benny,” Stel said, “How’d
you know this stuff? I didn’t know that pros
of protesting existed, let alone
here in the States, where folks aren’t really prone
61.
to any of this sort of thing…” her thought
had petered out, become uncomfortable
the further that she’d tried to wring the wrought.
She hoped the shouting scrum had squelched her dull
attempt at building bridges. Benny rose
to full height, shoulders back, and seemed rejoiced
an audience saw her for what she knows.
Her lowered sign she gave to Stel. “Here, hoist,”
she said. “It started back when Occupy
took root in Oakland long beyond when it
had died out elsewhere. Here we thought to vie
the battle past when other hypocrites
backed down from all the principles that spurred
them into action. Gone. Demands unheard.
62.
Before that was Zuccotti Park in New
York, on Manhattan, as a little camp,
a few folks whose persistence grew to coup
as message spread that modern world’s big champs
were just the one percent. The ninety-nine
percent of us remaining wouldn’t have
a chance to grow up in a world designed
with opportunities like theirs. You’d halve
and halve and halve and halve and halve again
and still need one more halving to equate
the pay of average CEO to men
they hired, still more than ladies. That debate
on inequality showed discontent
with how we’d let rich riches so augment.”
63.
It wasn’t that the story thusly told
moved Stella then to tears, as trauma had
a few times since arrival. But cold rolled
in cyclic gusts that wet all eyes unclad
in glasses for protection. “Holy nuts!”
said Mona, shivering and rummaging
through purse for warming shawl she dropped like klutz.
“This bag is getting more like luggage. Thing
fits three layers made for different weather you
encounter in an SF afternoon,
but wow, does it get heavy.” She’d eschewed
the practicality of backpacks tuned
to lugging stuffs of daily life around,
without forethought replacements don’t abound.
64.
Amid the cold, though, came a tiny hint
of tears from slate-gray sky, to bathe the crowd
lit up aflame about the tiny print
that turned their brethren into disallowed.
Though nice of clouds to empathize as such,
degrading Centigrade and rising breeze
would lava hearts cool igneous to touch
and turn a protest shout to protest wheeze.
The chanting dipped below its fever pitch
as most participants checked if they’d brought
sufficient rain gear so to make the switch
from clement to inclement. Most rethought
intended length of stay at gathering
imagining the thick rain slathering
65.
they knew was that which this way comes. Its drops
amassing from lone bowsprit cannonballs
into a broadside salvo of what sops,
the rain attacked the crowd. “Ah, god-sown schmaltz!”
laughed Tee, whose paisley’d started to soak through.
She hadn’t moved to get umbrella and
protect herself, explaining this woke crew
would never be denied the chance firsthand
to spearhead the resistance. “Rain dries off.
You get wet, then time passes and you dry.
You only go when shivering,” she coughed,
“enough to harm yourself.” She glorified
the choice to stay with will and principle
and viewed the body as invincible.
66.
That streak of stubbornness that Stel’d enjoyed
(with some exceptions) in Abu was here.
The others felt it too like liked steroid,
deferring moves to Tee as puppeteer
in charge. The levity she kept despite
the chilly drops that came down almost warmed.
Five minutes in, two thirds had left the site,
for insulation homes provide from storm.
Stel hadn’t staged a conference with Cade
to choose if they should stay or rather go.
She couldn’t tell if this was masquerade
for sake of staying close to chat with Mo
or rather his release of long-confined
desire to hit the streets and feel the grind.
67.
So there they stood, unaltered sense that these
were principles to stand for nationwide.
They huddled like Gibraltar ’gainst the seas,
asserting ever-presence through what tides
the sky would try to replicate. Her fear
subsided as her conscious mind dissolved.
As church liturgy spellbinds hemispheres
of mind toward flow, so Stella’d too absolved.
They cycled through their chants methodically,
each binding their group tighter to the next,
respect augmenting for the oddities
who chose to stay through clouds’ extended hex.
Awakening from trance compressed hours hence,
Stel saw Mo, Tee, and Benny pack, commence
68.
departure time. They shook like Shackleton’s
Antarctic expedition, lips turned blue,
cheeks chalked. “Let’s bust this tabernacle. One’s
at risk of injury, check out the hue
of those there fingers. Periwinkle’s match!”
joked Mona of Tee’s color and her hat.
“You said the fifth,” said Cade, “that’s our rematch?”
They nodded yes, tooth chatter too checked chat
from going any longer. Trio left.
Stel felt Cade’s arm wrap brotherly around
her shoulder, then they hobbled home. His heft
was more on her than him. For one homebound,
he’d had endurance bottled up. All gone,
he needed rest before he’d turn back on.
69.
No? Stel was wrong. Like Iron Man, he rose
with quick-found fusion Arc Reactor core
once home’s front door swung open to the Bose
stack waiting for its chief emcee’s encore.
Four buttons pushed on phone brought airwaves back.
“I ain’t as great at sayin’ stuff as Lu,
and didn’t tell you why I think shit’s wack
enough to freeze my ass off, risk the flu,
and get Yeye a sitter for a coup
by protest. Lupe can explain. Yeah, here—
Reporting live from other side what you
hear’s all a bunch of nonsense in my ear.
The rich man, poor man, all us gotta pay
’cause freedom ain’t free, ’specially ’round my way.”
70.
Post-hook it said unnecessary-ness
is protesting to get arrested. That
goes right against my hustling ethics; his
view that you can’t make change ’hind jail cell slats.
Cade nodded head and mouthed the lyrics, rest
no longer needed with his songs’ IV.
I go as left as a heart in the chest,
then answered in the worldly repartee,
’cause Horn of Africa’s starvin’ to death.
Attention to that line was dangerous,
and robbed her of her normal pace of breath
and sax riff looping back, all canorous
was now cantankerous: her mind snapped to
how Tanzanian farmers were trapped, screwed
71.
by how the knowledge passed to them’s made false
by changing climate patterns. Rains would come
erratically, instead of timed like waltz
as they had been when they themselves were young.
The carbon fueling US fuel to buy
a trillion things from China, lifting their
economy was what also supplied
the greenhouse gas afflicting brethren’s air.
Her heart went back to homeland, where ‘improved’,
more mechanistic farming hadn’t spread.
Resiliency was thin. Grounds still hand-grooved
can only yield home calories if ’stead
gets hoeing, planting, raining all apace.
Asyncopation’s risk is dying race.
72.
But what was she to do? She sat on couch,
with outer layers still sopping from the rain.
Her inner layers sponged up damp wilt. She slouched,
in feeling, ’spite day’s thrill. Was it in vain,
this signage, chanting, congregation ’gainst
Boy’s policies that lay outside their hands?
It felt more sceney in protest pretense
than likely to repeal the travel bans.
And further still from her sensed agency
lay Lu’s bait ’bout the famines of homelands:
this climate change approach of ‘wait and see’
meant farmers faced once-fertile loam turned sand.
As powerlessness consumed her, torpor swelled.
In contrast, she saw Cade as if in spell.
73.
His bodily appendages twitched, beats
of bass deciding where and when each thumped
to keep the time with rapper’s rhyme caprice,
all while his body lower, lower slumped
toward couchbound nap. His mouth preoccupied
with acrobatic mouthing of this prayer,
unorthodox it be. He said Lu lied
lots less than Fox News pundit millionaires.
In viewpoint, Cade at protest found his kind.
Though few chose rhymes as proper worship form,
he liked new friends who acted unconfined
by Boy’s nigh-evangelical reform.
As sky was falling, Cade’s refuge was word
repeated so to self-sense undergird.
74.
That evening Stel lay on her bed, awake.
Like early Chengdu days made mind snowglobe
with newness hailing down and scarce a break,
her Bay experience now strobed the lobes
throughout her brain. Not only was high school
a thing past now, its substitute was nil:
once-rigid scheduled time now reeled unspooled,
and she could daily act with own free will.
From structured life to sudden liberty
left Stella feeling rudderless and, too,
quite bountiful (if lost). Such zip her freed-
up life would now enjoy! Yet, still she knew
without a way to capture fleeting nows
five more years would escape in lengthy drowse.
75.
New place, new time? New rituals, then, she
decided as the day’s thoughts whirlpool drowned
the chance of evening calm. On bedstand the
tome sat that told when Gumi twirled fools ’round –
and namely Stel herself – its last half blank.
What better journal for the start of days,
she thought, than symbol of when she broke rank
with social expectations, dreamed causeways
to larger lives? The stories of childhood
spent too long lonely in that volume. Pen
in hand, she wondered if the protest stood
alongside other chapters of times when
she ventured out, took risks, oft failed, still grew.
Her ballpoint moved on, detailed just-met crew.
CHAPTER 19
76.
Crew hadn’t lied: the fifth next month they showed
up right where promised: streets Laguna, Fell.
They packed old booths, dim tungsten golden glow
drop bulbs cast shadows sharply. “Tu – uh – tell,
me how you think that’s truly something good
we ought to aim for,” said topknotted man.
She smiled, “Well, first it’s Tee, not Tu, so could
you do that courtesy? Thanks. Next, not ‘can’
or ‘could’, but rather ‘should’. Democracy
originates in power that labor keeps,
for what is labor? Us. Our paws, the ‘we’
from mind to digit’s pen on ballot sheets.
And in between election cycles, we’ve
responsibility to help aggrieved.”
77.
Her explanation quieted the group,
with chastised man bunned quietest of all.
The moment’s silence welcomed to the troop
approaching Stel and Cadence. Café small,
there wasn’t too much room at built-in bench.
Tee, Benny, Mona, and few more sat there,
and bade them join on stools. “Joe here’s entrenched,
and blind in his adherence doctrinaire,”
Tee said of man-bun. Stel’d seen most folks at
the rainy protest. Tee said, “He’s read Rand
and seems to think Roark’s staunch position that
we don’t do jack collectively’s good stand
on which to anchor politics,” she rolled
her cigarette and eyes with equal cold.
78.
Now Stella at that time knew jack about
these persons Rand and Roark, how hero viewed
society as having blocked his route
to flourishing. But better not seem rude,
she thought, and nodded knowingly. “You weren’t
all kidding ’bout your politics, were you?”
asked Cade, as Tee through windowframe lit, burnt,
and puffed her thoughts to smoke. “Assembled crew—
well, normal members,” Tee began, and flashed
