Arcs

By Zachary Brett Charles

“I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight.” - Malcolm X

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.

These statues are in the way

and ugly, frankly.

Limbs stick out

at odd angles, perpendicular

to crushed bodies, penalized.

Unable to bear the weight 

of the arcs on my shoulders-my name

is not Noah-that is my friend

who built bongs from gatorade bottles in high school.

My arcs are long and heavy,

moral and chaotic, broken

and breaking my arms

until radius and ulna break skin.

I will continue to bear the weight

in the 25th hour of the day

when justice will meet entropy, shatter

and rain glass dust, angleless, an inundation 

against time to clear these ugly statues

with bands of color, replace them 

and their ugly history with prisms. 

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Zachary Charles is a young person currently living in Seattle, Washington with his partner and their cat, Frankie. He loves writing poetry, short stories, and small comic strips for his Dungeons and Dragons games. He worries constantly about the effect of Western capitalism on individuals, humanity as a whole, and the environment. He studied Spanish at Elon University and proudly turned down awards with Greek letters for academic achievement.