Who ill Survive in America? Or 2017: A Horror Film

a golden shovel variation after Ross Gay

All year, I have worked
against this feeling, this country, this raging wreck
from sea to shining sea. Do you know what it means
to wake each morning, to realize your own brown hands
aren’t enough to protect you, that the likelihood
of any given day being your last one on earth
is too high, that we are more likely
to find life on Mars than to ever actually fix that fatal likelihood,
hat we will probably just continue
with our meaningless Starbucks orders, fill the house
with Nina Simone and call that “woke,” value furry, collared creatures
over our own human kin? Sometimes, seems like they can smell
our otherness, seems like we sparkle with something fiery in the sunlight,
but not even our spectacular, crystalline glitter makes it easier
for them to believe that we have any inalienable right to breathe.