We’re living through a period of momentous upheaval in the United States, walking through the gates of history. I’ve dedicated myself once again to the practice of poetry in an effort to bear witness.

9.11.20

Today I’m sitting on the grease mats

of the kitchen where planes are exploding

into tall buildings on a TV

someone has deposited

on the cutting board

still wet with prep,

tomatoes that bled out,

it seems, twenty years or so ago.

 

Today I’m scrolling through my feed

all fire and fury

in Portland, Oakland

 

all up and down the coast

my friends are fleeing, flying,

praying in a hotel room somewhere

they haven’t lost their home

 

all up and down the coast my friends are

leaving the streets for the first time in weeks,

huddled indoors, watching the skies for any

hint of blue, that apocalyptic red sun

shining through

 

The emergency is always elsewhere until it isn’t

until it is your turn to decide

whether to flee, to seek

a cooler clime, a street where the police

are polite, perhaps, if you are white,

or stand and fight the fire.

*

9.14.20

Coming on fall—the West

is still on fire and the country

is someone I haven’t met yet.

 

Cavalcades of oversized trucks

with oversized flags that scream

Don’t Tread on Me

invade the city of my heart.

The streets shout back

I Can’t Breathe

in red spray paint, dripping like

a crime scene.

 

I have no idea

who we will be to each other

come November, but I do know

that a six-month-old right whale

died of injuries perpetuated by

propellers this morning.

I know that Opal Creek,

Oregon, will never be the same.

I know that 20,000 oil and gas leases will be sold in the time it takes for me to

 

finish this sentence, and that

water spewing from a frack field

in southern New Mexico killed

all of one woman’s livestock. I know that

 

more deaths are imminent,

and I keep trying to figure

how it is, even so, the truth

 

that I am at the center

of a living intelligence, that is, even now

knitting bones back together, breaking

down the waste of wanton destruction,

initiating the great work

of repair.

*

9.21.20

For Ruth Bader Ginsberg

 

Justice isn’t blind

she fought so long for us to see

as clearly as she did that

a woman herself must be

in the room where decisions are made

about her body or that body will

forever be enslaved, indentured,

beholden to the eye

of the beholder, to the eye

that looks away

from the truths of history.

 

Look, women in long skirts and

petticoats and layers upon layers

of wholly unnecessary undergarments

threw themselves before horses

on racetracks for the sake of suffrage—

they went willingly to jail, endured

every offense, and refused to eat until they could speak

and at last be heard.

 

Justice listened well and labored long—

she fought for us till the day she died.

Now we must fight for her.

*

9.23.20

 

Mornings and nights, these days, I’m always writing letters

it’s like I’m already incarcerated

it’s like I’m already living in a police state

reaching out to the underground

filaments carrying messages moved by

a system as old as our idea of America

itself in danger of sabotage

from within.

 

Some days every line seems rote—this fine line

unfurling from my pen, imploring

strangers to vote. Lauren,

Brittany, Taiesha, Farok—are you out there?

Confined to your home for fear

of adding to a death toll now longer

than the list of names on the

Vietnam Memorial?

 

Do your guts twist

every time you read the news?

If so, could we maybe find a way to

break out of here

together?

*

9.24.20

 

When a Black woman can be killed

in her own home, in her own bed

 

When the White man who shot her

cannot be charged

 

When the streets cannot be emptied

of their calls for justice

 

When the halls of power

cannot hear their distant cries

 

When White militias can form checkpoints

while Black protesters fill the jails

 

When the president can withdraw federal funds

from cities critical of his actions

 

When he cannot commit

to a peaceful transition of power

 

Peace becomes impossible.

*

9.25.20

 

A peaceful transition—isn’t that what we all want?

For the pain to pass, our loved ones close.

For whatever words we’ve weighed to be said,

to speak our truths, to express regrets

that we find ourselves unable

to remain. To give kind thanks

for the hospitality of the body, the love we’ve known

and shown, and then to pass like air

released from the lungs

one last time

out into the every.

 

No fight, no white-knuckled grip

on the power of the hands, the ability to direct ourselves

or each other. No bitterness on the tongue.

No bloody brawl by way of farewell—

no need to evict the previous tenant,

to wrench the baton from the panting runner,

no grief at the loss when it comes.

 

Sweetly in silence the sun sinks back

behind the gentle curvature of the earth

the crickets offer their opening remarks

and dusk descends in that sort of

peace that mends.