Dear America

I’m past that post-election fog
but still submerged in the flooding
swamp stinking our shoes wet.
Mom jokes about leaving our country.
Dad doesn’t want my ass
disappeared whenever I flare
on Facebook. For the record, I protested
against the man—handmade signs,
a friend in an ape suit, a golden
toilet. I treated it like an anecdote, rallied
for Bernie, then HRC, assuming a new history
that hopes harder than hailstones breaking glass.
Instead, we wake to a house of horrors
where a celebrity tweets hatred, dons
a limp red tie, scrawls
executive hypocrisies, and calls it politics.

I’m still learning what to do in the post-truth America.
I’m still scanning a watch list for professors,
their liberal agendas for teaching
against racism, bigotry, and misogyny, a website
hiding behind “patriotism” and “alt-right.”

I’m thinking back to everything I told my students
in November. Did I lean too far to one side
of the classroom? When I said:
be informed, speak up, vote goddamnit,
did they see America?
My politics are a fractured puzzle.
I’m trying to solve the field and sky
with all the missing pieces.
Stubborn, I’ll keep talking
about the watch lists,
the protests, the work to do
against injustice, knowing if I’m found
worthy of label, my lessons
and words won’t change.