José Alcantara: The National Association of Information Destruction

I bet you think I made that up,

that this is some dystopian anti-elegy,

and that I am another Cassandra, bemoaning

a distant, inevitable future, but I saw it, 

not ten minutes ago, on the side of a wasp 

yellow truck parked on Fourth street, 

the words wrapped in a ring around three 

capital A’s and what looks like a house 

falling to pieces. It was a kind of insignia,

like FDIC, but instead of insuring money,

they ensure silence, they ensure plausible 

deniability, they ensure that what was, 

will never be again. And from the back 

of the truck, the roar of unseen blades, 

shredding unseen pages, and I wonder 

who is in charge, and is it a cabinet

level position, and what law chartered 

its mission, and when did it pass, this law 

that no one has ever read, that no one 

will ever find, because it vanished in the back 

of a yellow truck rumbling on fourth street.

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Copyright 2020 José Alcantara

José Alcantara teaches high school math in Aspen, Colorado.