Sit with Me
Sit again with me by the fire
to debate the placement of commas and italics
and the meanings of words
as if the world were at stake
in this warm, bright room
secured by a heavy door with a good lock
on a street in a block no ICE agent
would dare wield his baton
and that for a moment, what matters is nothing
more than words on this page.
Here in this room, we believe in choosing
the right words, in the right order,
and that it makes a difference
whether craven means “crass”
or something more odious
like “openly indifferent to suffering”
—even if both happen to apply,
only one is precisely correct,
and we believe that matters.
After the election, a woman on the bus
cried out while checking her phone.
“Thank God,” she said, the bees
are no longer going extinct—they’ve
been taken off the Endangered List!”
It was not long after that
the EPA was shut down, and the word
criminal amended to mean children
who escape into this country from
earthquakes, machetes and guns.
So many children crossing those rivers
and last night, workers taken right out
of the kitchen at Cavallo Point, but here
in my neighborhood the magnolias
are unfolding large creamy blooms
with an abandon that brings to mind
the words wanton and craven. Sit with me
again and remind me words matter
as much as the world. Remind me
craven means not crass, but cowardly,
even if both happen to apply
to our president, and evil and immoral
are almost always over-the-top
in a poem. Tell me what each term means
and does not mean and what
this particular four-year term means
to the father who worked here for 20 years
and now must leave his family behind,
and tell me how to parse a sentence
that balances weeping with silence,
children with criminal and abandon,
and president with craven and crass
and openly indifferent to suffering,
immoral, and evil—give me
any meaning that makes any sense
and will not allow the reader to choose,
or to turn away.
First published in Nimrod, 2020. First Prize, The Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry.