Darling America,
I’ve crossed out ocean and written Jesus,
crossed out sky and have written sky.
There are blueberries in the crosshairs
of a gun. There’s a Statue of Liberty figurine missing
her torch—this is America being America, licking
its feet or it will die trying. We are alone and afraid
of heights, having an existential crisis on the edge
of a cliff. Listen, the dolls in my dollhouse
are being deported and the landlord is typing
in all caps. How do we recognize humanity
when we’re just a name on a screen? An avatar
of a flag or resist, a red cap or a pink hat?
We’re holding the door for people, until we know
how they voted then we’re tripping each other
into the future, getting high off how fast they fall.
Fear—it’s so much easier to believe the shaking
is normal, so let’s put the chains on the tires—
we’ve got four more miles—and we have no idea
how this will work out, but darling,
I’ve got my senators on redial, a sidecar filled
with cocktails, and my beautiful friends,
let’s watch the sunrise together as we reattach
the torch to liberty, eat the blueberries
under the sigh of a mushroom cloud sky.
is the author of six books and the co-founder of Two Sylvias Press. Her most recent book, Hourglass Museum (White Pine Press, 2014), was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and shortlisted for the Julie Suk Prize in Poetry. Her other books include The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts For Your Writing Practice, Fire On Her Tongue: An Anthology of Contemporary Women’s Poetry, and Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room, winner of the Foreword Book of the Year Prize for poetry and a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She lives in a sleepy seaside town in the Pacific Northwest where she is an avid paddleboarder and hiker.
Header photo of Statue of Liberty by ParentRap, courtesy Pixabay. Photo of Kelli Russell Agodon by Ronda Broatch.
