“Let my anger be the celebration we were never / supposed to have.”
—Jacqui Germain
America, you have left me on “Read” more times than I can count,
and yet I keep writing these texts to you, though you ghost
me on the regular. Buzzed, I go to bed, and buzzing with expectation
each morning I wake up ready to do the same thing all over again,
as though faith weren’t something inherently crazy, given the state of things.
Lately, I’ve been making End Times jokes, except they’re not really jokes anymore.
Who knew? The Book of Revelation is a documentary
and the sky really is falling and the ocean is filling faster
with the blood of everyone except those who spill it, freely, without guilt.
America, this is what my God has told me about you—
you field of dying sunflowers, you semiautomatic gun slinging unsanctuary, you
apparition that is the crowd gathered beneath yet another oak tree on the postcard—
Justice is not a pendulum Justice is not a hammer Justice is not a bandage
it is water, and your better angels have long sung of its rolling tide,
calling those things which are not as though they were. Am I crazy,
America, letting you inside me again and again though you do not even love me,
no matter how much I pretzel myself into something soft and edible
enough for your salt-slicked tongue—
America, I have lived in your valleys and my shed skin is buried in your ground;
night has fallen, America, and I am pulling your star down from the mountain.
Living on a Ghost Plantation / Love Poem
Roanoke, VA
these nights when I leave my house and its ghosts
standing watch
I walk down the long hill
facing the valley’s open heart
for here in its fluorescence of gas
stations and starlight silence
is no longer a sword
in my mouth
