The revolution will be so quiet, so slow, so insidious, that no one will notice when it happens. There will be a huge crowd in the parking lot waiting for the stores to open. Someone will cry out, Storm the ramparts! What ramparts? No one will see any ramparts. Many will not know what ramparts are. Some will look the word up on their phones and shrug their shoulders. Hours later one man will cry out, I know what ramparts are! But he will be old, and slow on the phone, and keep making typos and accidentally falling out of Google, and then he will get a call and answer it and it will be some woman screaming at him in Mongolian or some language he does not know, so when he does find the word and shout out, I know what ramparts are! the huge crowd will be gone and he will be standing alone in the parking lot. Years later he will tell his great-grandchildren about the revolution, and how it happened, and that he was there, and how he, and only he, is left alive to tell them about the revolution. His great-grandchildren will nod, pretending to understand what he is saying.
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Richard Garcia‘s poetry books include The Other Odyssey, Dream Horse Press, 2014, The Chair, BOA 2015, and Porridge, Press 53, 2016. His poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies. He has won a Pushcart prize and has been in Best American Poetry.
