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Dear America MAG
Dear America
A headline flashes on the television screen (twenty
two wounded and one dead in new york city after
an attempted bombing …), she angrily stretches out
a sheet of lined paper, cries a letter to america onto
the page, scribbling away all the violent syllables
because they are the only words she can control
(she reads the news every morning and today the
total body count was three hundred and nine) –
but she knows it is hard to stay hopeful in a place
where death exists everywhere that life does,
shaking the world until it knows only how to hate.
dear america,
you are nothing
but a living tomb …
The kettle screams (yet he doesn’t flinch because
he hasn’t left his bed in days), he sinks into his
sheets and lily (who spends all her time baking
cookies for nobody to eat) says, “john, honey,
your tea is ready” – but all he can hear are
the distant echoes of school bells and gunshots
and the humming of the yellowed lights overhead.
dear america,
why are there bullet holes
in my daughter’s
school uniform –
Rain pours onto the pavement around her, she
presses her palms onto the gravestone (her father
died three days ago), and she’s freezing, holding
her ears so the cold doesn’t bite them off (she
sold her coat for more money but it was too late)
– and she cries, sobbing with the sky because her
father is dead and her fingers are blue and her
voice isn’t stronger than the weeping of the wind.
dear america,
why in the world
is insulin
so expensive –
Sirens flash into the waning of the night and he
shivers, remembering the lessons he had to learn
on his own (keep your lips sealed, keep your eyes
down) and maybe (just maybe) they’ll say “good
morning,” rather than shooting … (they say it’s a
white man’s world) and he’s pretty sure they’re
right because he knows that there are currently
hundreds of black teenaged boys sitting away their
lives in prison cells for crimes they didn’t commit
– and he sighs, because at least prison is better
than death, and he’s ashamed that he’d rather wear
handcuffs the wrong size than a hospital gown.
dear america,
I’ll pledge allegiance
to your flag and
to your republic,
but liberty and justice
doesn’t exist for all …
She walks quickly (like she always does), her
heart beats to the steady tapping of her heels
against the concrete and she curses under her
breath for not bringing a change of clothes (she
can’t run in pretty shoes) – then the next morning
she goes to work, earns eighty cents to his dollar,
and listens to her male colleagues as they explain
to her why birth control shouldn’t be a right.
dear america,
get your hands
off my body –
They are almost there. she wipes tears from her
children’s pink cheeks (it’s been too long since
they last felt safe) and dreams of a lifetime without
war (a place far away, where her kids can carry
books instead of bullets), her hands are calloused
like bread, creased like tattered flags – and on
nights when silence sinks into everything but the
churning of the gray water below, she kisses the rosy
foreheads of her tired, broken children whispers
in broken english, “we are going to be free …”
dear america,
you are my hope
for my family,
for my children,
for my world …
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