On the side of the road, white cardboard in the shape of a man,              illegible script. A signpost with scrawl: Will pay cash for diabetes strips.A system under the system with its black box.                           Disability hearing?a billboard reads. Trouble with Social Security? Where does the riot begin?Spark of dry grass, Russian thistle in flames, or butterflies bobbingas if pulled by unseen strings                      through the alleyway.My mother’s riot would have been peace. A bicycle wheelchained to a concrete planter. What metaphorcan I use to describe the children sleeping in cages in detentioncenters? Birds pushed fenceward by a breeze? A train of brake lightsextending? Mesquite pods mill under our feeton a rainless sidewalk. What revolution                     will my daughter feed?A break-the-state, twig-quick snap or a long divining                as iffor water? A cotton silence? A death?                          Who will read thisin the next economy, the one that comes after the one that kills us?What lessons will we take from the side of the road? A wooden crucifix,a white bicycle, a pinwheel, a poemwaiting to be redacted:                                        What would you cross out?