Recess

I say I love when in the exchange
it’s absent. Power more than a father’s
un-kept promise. Please, turn your palms down,
drop them from your meager chin
to the aquifer piped through the faucet.
The pressure of the empty pipe seizes
convulses rust water in upheaval. Though they’ve
turned the main off while working beneath
the street, though what you knew of plenty
is abruptly rationed, you turn the handle
of the faucet not simply to watch it sieze
but to perform its duty in absence of purpose.