POEM (“popular fear…”)

popular fear bad taste all of us glued
to a centralized rectangle

expectations metaphysics
out the window

we wonder what happened when
all this got started

what moment,
(there must have been one)
when (inside)
the ball dropped
the glass shattered

& it all got
so particularly and irretrievably
ugly.

Simon Pettet is a long-time resident of the Lower East Side whose book Hearth, published by Talisman House, is his Collected Poems.