ANDREW KOZMA

Essence and Justification
     To supply the motivation for the essence and justification of terror,
     its necessity, its limits.
          —V.I. Lenin

There is a machine at the end of the block.
It is a child playing jacks, the wide sweep of the hand
like the closeting of a bird’s wing.

A tree chances a dropped branch
hugging a power line to the ground; the man cutting
the branch aligns with a desire for removal

of possibility. Walk the sidewalk, unafraid.
You construct eventuality. The machine exhibits
lust and in its shadow anthills arise.

This night men will enter a house
and take willing participants. The fiction
is participation, though everyone has a part.

With daylight a woman in a sea green dress
assumes herself conspicuous. She pauses before
certain houses, scratches a leg, shows some skin.