Units of Measurement

I only really wanted one finger’s worth of hopelessness,
But got two instead.

In line outside Berkeley Bowl, mask on as our future foretold,
I read my list over and over
Until I had it committed:

 (1) freeway billboard of lonely
(14) wide-ruled notebooks of paranoia
(1) Family Size Ultimate Therapy bottle of keep on keeping on
(½) Black finger of hopelessness (may be substituted with lost faith, in a pinch);
And a jar of pesto.
(I have a lot of pasta right now.)

 Between the aisles I spread myself into the shape of a hawk,
Scavenging each of my list ingredients and then—hopelessness. 
At the turn of today’s apocalypse
I did not find comfort in despair’s eager mouth,
But here I stare into an empty barrel.
And not so much as one fresh finger to be spared.

 My uncle told me they called them fingers
So that we could remember exactly how much.
The problem is there’s no standard.
It’s not like an inch is this long, and a centimeter only this long.
Each is different.

 The first grade finger you used
To plant the lily you gave Mommy for Mother’s Day
Is one length. The digit you used to dismiss the white man who,
From behind the glass of his bifocals then rapidly closing car window in the Target parking lot,
Told that same Mommy she needed valium for daring to cross his car’s path?
Another, different integer.
The fingers of
Andrew Young, Ralph Abernathy, Jesse Jackson, Mary Louise Hunt, and Samuel Billy Kyles
Stretched outward over the horizon, cardinal tears streaming from Lorraine’s gaunt face
All are different fingers, with lengths and circumferences their own,
And those fingers point and guffaw at the tape measurer’s arrogance.

 In a barrel you can go by feel.
No use in looking at recipes or in gauging quantities,
But with a barrel you can really just feel;
Touch and caress,
Hold, even flick
Each finger until you possess whatever it is—
Sugary joy
Bittersweet confidence
Nougaty self-forgiveness—
You’re actually looking for.
And right now I’m looking for hopelessness,

 But not like this
Pre-packaged commodity monstrosity.
This affront! And overpriced.
Two, slender and also stubbly?
Chocolatey, yet faded and gray?
Nimble, but somehow stiff and weary?
Fingers, punched together: a value pack.

 Don’t we know our fingers can outlast bloodlines?
We don’t see that you only need half a fingernail, even
To bring dread to death’s door?
To fill every micrometer of a JET Magazine cover,
To highlight and annotate every page of the Moynihan report,
To power every body camera on the vibrations of
“See! We been knew! We told you!”?
Alongside this cheap pack of my suffering rests
Hope in its own barrels of abundance?

 I scoop as many fingers of hope as I can, and dump them
In my basket defiant. And then I double back
And grab that last value pack, hoping it
All the way down my sweatpants pocket.