Cento for an American Monarchy
In the east a bank of clouds rises up silently like dark bread;
rumors fall like rain.
This is the everyday we spoke of,
days when storms hover
seeking visionary Indian angels,
and light from meliorating stars.
A celestial brightness—
let it fill you, let it bruise.
Do you think anger is love divided
to meet its embers,
fallen tribe that rises to rebel?
Our task is to crouch in the dark as long as we can,
witness the anger etched into the undulating mountains.
Even after the world ends, there is work to do:
a monument of moon-white stone,
a gospel of patience and dust,
vines and olive trees.
An eagle-feather wind:
we are blessed and scattered
in the season of drought and hurricane.
Source for each cento line (in order of appearance):
“Morning in the Burned House” Margaret Atwood
“How to Write a Poem in a Time of War” Joy Harjo
“What the Living Do” Marie Howe
“Confessions: My Father, Hummingbirds, and Frantz Fanon” Benjamin Sáenz
“Howl” Alan Ginsberg
“Song of Nature” Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Evangeline” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“To a Young Poet” Zaina Alsous
“playing America in spring” m.s. RedCherries
“Whites in Congo Flee by Ferry” Danielle Legros Georges
“A Cry from an Indian Wife” Emily Pauline Johnson
“Words Whispered to a Child Under Siege” Joseph Fasano
“When it Really is Just the Wind, and Not a Furious Vexation” Kyle Tran Myhre
“Everybody’s Autobiography” Tracy K. Smith
“The Shield of Achilles” W. H. Auden
“Acequia del Llano” Arthur Sze
“Alchemy Horse” Natalie Diaz
“Last Days” Kwame Dawes
Deborah A. Miranda is an enrolled member of the Ohlone-Costanoan Esselen Nation, with Santa Ynez lineage. The author of Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir, as well as four poetry collections, she lives at River Song Cohousing in Eugene, Oregon.
Read other Letters to America online or in Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy, published in partnership with Trinity University Press.
Header photo by yan1515g, courtesy Pixabay.
