Tain Leonard-Peck
Seattle, When the Walls Fell, and Rose
A needle stands silent against the ever-grey sky. The streets seethe, red ribbons of rage, but this is not an AIDS walk. Furious clashes between the uniformed and the irregular, authority corralling anarchy.
A bottle flares.
A bullet flies
Store-front barricades are ravaged, new bastions rise. Sandbag, concrete, steel, junk. Relics of last week's civilization, ancient history.
Guitars in the park, no one strums Kumbaya.
At the barriers, radio static is the only blues. Police horses whinny, waiting the charge. In the wind, protest signs whisper and snap. When the pot boils over, who’ll be left in the kitchen?
Will there be anything left to eat, after
all spoons are turned into shivs?
Tain Leonard-Peck is a student, writer, actor, monologist, and model. He paints and composes, and is a competitive sailor, skier, and fencer. He has written and acted in his produced plays, and his work has been published in literary journals, including the 2020 Anthology of Youth Writing on Human Rights & Social Justice, Molecule, Multiplicity Magazine, The Horror Tree, Czykmate, The Elevation Review, and Idle Ink. He won Honorable Mention in the Creators of Literary Justice Award, by IHRAF, the world’s largest human rights art festival. He currently lives on a family farm on Martha’s Vineyard, but has lived all over the world.