Punch Line


By EMARI DIGIORGIO     |     POETRY     |     VOLUME 50.1&2     |     2016 AUBURN WITNESS POETRY PRIZE WINNER


Vertical Divider



The joke wishes it wasn’t the joke.
It calls a helpline—the joke wants to punch
a bullet through its brow, and it’s hard for the operator
to talk the joke down. She says, help is on the way.

No, don’t send the cops. But it’s too late. The joke
doesn’t have enough pills or a tongue to swallow them.
The joke doesn’t have knees to pray. A black man
and a Hispanic are riding in a car. Leave it there.
Leave them in the Sentra at the QuikChek. Let them
drop off their kids at school. Let the cops

bust down the joke’s door. Who’s driving?
Who the fuck is driving this joke?

                                                          What a relief.
The black man and the Hispanic are both breathing, cuffed
upright in the back of a cruiser. No blood on the cop’s hands.

Let’s make you the cop. Let’s make you the law.
What sound does a body make when it’s in a chokehold?

A black cop is driving his Hispanic partner. A white cop
is driving himself crazy. He’s tired of telling the same group
of young men to stop loitering on the platform. Every night,
just milling around, blocking people, pushing, shoving
each other, a game, intimidating passengers.

Today you’re the black man. You’ve read the script, memorized
your lines, Yes, officer, perfected the least intimidating pitch,
a walk that won’t draw attention, should you enter
a convenience store, a bank.

The car is driving itself. The car is the joke.
The tires smoke and the brakes sink to the floorboard.

Two cops are in a car—this one isn’t a joke (turns out
the first one wasn’t either)—parked, gunned down.
As if these young men’s deaths will bring another
back to his children. Some illogical exchange
fallen angels run.

                                    A black car, driving rain,
eye whites, night, the drawbridge of gritted teeth opening,
no such thing as bulletproof words, floodlight, that
deer stare, the moment before a buck turns, threatened,
having done nothing.

                                    This joke is a loaded Glock 19.
Between box spring and mattress, in the glove box.
A siren wails. Two cops sit in a car. Two cops die in a car.
This isn’t a joke. This was supposed to be a joke.
We were supposed to laugh and say, Oh, that’s not right,
and shake our heads and go on with our days, all of us--
black man, Hispanic, cop, you, reader, sitting there
waiting for the punch line, the big haha aha.

Maybe you’re saying, No, that’s not funny, or
It’s true, you know. Maybe you’re telling the joke.

When the cops arrive the joke is sobbing. The joke asks
to be locked up. It won’t tell itself anymore. It wants
a new punch line. It wants to reform itself, to be
elegy for cop, black man, his panic.




EMARI DIGIORGIO’s forthcoming debut collection is The Things a Body Might Become. She has received residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, Sundress Academy of the Arts, and Rivendell Writers’ Colony, as well as a poetry fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Recent poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from APIARY, The FEM, HEArt, Hot Metal Bridge, Jet Fuel Review, Pith, RHINO, and White Stag. DiGiorgio teaches writing at Stockton University and is a Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Poet. She hosts World Above, a monthly reading series in Atlantic City.

VOLUME 50.1&2

This poem is the winning poem from our 2016 Auburn Witness Poetry Prize Honoring Jake Adam York. Learn more about the contest here.