Robert Yune

PITTSBURGH, SEPTEMBER 2009: CHATTER

Wednesday, the G-20 tomorrow.
The usual: downtown banks shuttered,
The streets and bridges eerie corridors,
Mesh barricades with impeccable symmetry standing guard
Over empty geometrical space–it magnifies and expands, waiting.

The matte helicopters pass with their spotlights, then pass again.

And we are searching for anarchists,
Green and dewy, stiff hoods and black fingernails,
They stir our way. Already, they’ve scrawled
strange maps and symbols through our city.

Our radios speak of PVC contraband, warehouses stocked with human waste.

Below the spotlight angels, we monitor our neighbors for anarchist tics,
Signal phrases, new stray-cat tendencies
Feeling rise within us the disharmony of broken glass.
The instinct to herd towards flame.

Tonight, we dream of anarchists. They are having anarchist sex,
To which even the laws of gravity do not apply.
Our city voided of commerce, we await the twenty commerce gods
The anarchists rappel down our imaginations to land soundlessly.

PITTSBURGH, SEPTEMBER 2009: DRUMS

The numbers lie. The police swarming the city too
Numerous to count. Legion after legion of beetleblack armor,
Their interchangeable plastic shields and neon orange shotguns
Bearing a message of victory, of futility, of momentum.

Fear itself whirled and pulled them to Pittsburgh. It arrived with them,
Bouncing on their utility belts,
Fermenting in mysterious pouches

No use for numbers as they inexplicably lined a street three-deep and
Remained for hours–waiting, we supposed, for protestors who never
Arrived. No use counting the screaming caravans wheeling past–
Hurtling, we supposed, towards elusive anarchists.

You didn’t measure police in decibels, as they beat their shields, or the calm
Recording which preceded the tear gas and sonic weapons. You measured
In views, in silent applause and curses as they
Stood shoulder to shoulder in a line that stated in a clear,
Amplified voice, “We
Shall overcome.”

Author Bio

Robert Yune’s work has appeared in Green Mountains Review and Hot Metal Bridge. In 2009, he received one of nine fiction writing fellowships through the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and received an honorable mention in Glimmer Train’s Family Matters contest, placing in the top 50 of over 1,000 entries. He earned his MFA at the University of Pittsburgh and works as a tutor for the university’s writing center, and as a reader for Chatham University’s low-residency MFA program.