69: Learning to Listen: Data as Poetry, Poetry as Data

In the circle of women, she wears her daughter’s faded No Fear sweatshirt, talks of her passion for basketball, her skateboard. So quick, they thought it was just a flu that lingered. Puffs of air from her throat— I can’t stop the tears— She would have been fifteen this year.

At night, he wrestles dreams, cold fingers still knotted on the knapsack. It was enough in the dark water to buoy him. He’d gone back, they said, to pull one buddy to the shore, then lay in the mud, spent, listening to voices from the middle of the lake calling, calling, the boat sunk now, the sound of his own throat strangling in throbs. Covered his ears with the sodden pack, waited for the lake to swallow their screams. One year later, I see him on the steps of the school. His eyes are old. I wonder if those screams are still fresh, bright as fish in an open boat.