SHED CHRONOLOGY
by Ricky Novaes de Oliveira
after Wanda Coleman; after Wisława Szymborska; for Sonya Massey
july the field has boiled the spring july when part of a crowd I notice my body july a captive frog didn’t even squirm july nothing never happens out here, but everything already happened. this perpetual perspective july the eternal contradiction rebukes revolution july explaining magic without words: a hope submerged under ancestral happenstance july please don’t come back blazing. it’s already so hot july there is no more shadow to hide, so bodies are traded for bombed-out fields of bliss july negatives on display, being undone by july sweating. this specific self staring now into dark with lamplight, with burning muttering an ending monologue july , why? july this soul and not the rest this now and Saturday of all days to die july the bullet has boiled the point
This poem is a collage of three sources.
Wanda Coleman wrote a poem called “Zed Chronology” that was published in 2001.

Sonya Massey was heinously murdered a few weeks ago this July and died in the same Springfield hospital that her family member once died in after being lynched by a mob in 1908.
Wisława Szymborska wrote this poem “Astonishment” and I encountered it in the collection Map: Collected and Last Poems published by City Lights in 2016.
I sat down to write about July scrolling through photographed memories and recent texts, and I wanted to write a happy summer poem, and I try not to write too specifically about current events because it always feels like I am choosing to highlight one thing and not all the others, and this is what came out.
Acabingly, Ricky