Had the Nazis won
There’d have been a
Nationalist Atlantic Treaty Organization,
staffed by high-ranking Wehrmacht officials—
men with names like Speidel, Heusinger,
Gehlen, and Globke.
Perhaps a man named Werner
would build rockets for the Reich
under the stars and stripes.
There’d be an industry for tracing ancestry.
People might say things like:
“I’m 47% German and 33% French.” And respond:
"Aren’t you glad to know that you’re pure?”
We’d compete for purest blood,
and purest German grammar,
and German ideals—
such as Efficiency,
Individualism,
the Value of Hard Work,
and Law and Order.
The police would be held up
as heroes
and paid as such,
with bonuses for cracked skulls
and hidden lists kept confidential.
Had the Confederates won
There’d have been a white supremacist United States,
with a white language,
and white neighborhoods,
and white committees deciding
who speaks
and who dies.
They’d issue identification cards:
Eyes: blue
Hair: blonde
Blood: Hexadecaroon
Neighborhood: Birchwood Reserve
The police would stop you
if you looked like you didn’t belong.
Villains would write our textbooks,
name our schools,
tell our stories—
and we would call them heroes.
police violence
So Many Reasons Why
When they diagnosed me I was in the middle of my divorce
Astonished at how I had come to find myself
In that time and place
I told my girlfriend I was extremely lucky. She said, no, I had worked hard to get where I was.
I watched a Palestinian child sob and shiver
On the dirt floor of a hospital tent
Her skin burned away. No anesthetic. No triage. No comfort.
I try to imagine what that feels like.
I fail.
My mom likes to say she worked hard to get where she is. She wasn’t lucky.
I think about Victor Jara. Somos cinco mil.
I try–and fail–to imagine how it feels
To sing for a better world,
And be forced to play guitar with no fingernails.
Maybe knowing you are forsaken is worse.
Maybe it’s the fingernail thing.
The national guard shot four year old Tanya Blanding with a tank while she hid in her living room.
A cop shot twelve year old Michael Ellerbe in the back.
Cops only come for me with warnings about driving too fast.
I’ve never even seen a police car at my parents’ house in the sticks.
My parents both told me I worked hard to get where I am.
They didn’t like hearing me say that I’m lucky.
When Adam and I got arrested
The cops knew his dad. (“Aren’t you Hot Rod’s boy?”)
They booked us and charged us and a few weeks later
The court case vanished into thin air
My parents say it wasn’t luck–it was because they hired a lawyer
When I was a child I had a good friend
His dad, in childhood, had been my dad’s good friend
My dad would take me into the woods and teach me to identify
Trees and plants and animal tracks
His dad taught him to buy his Sunday beer on Saturday and huff gasoline to get high.
I once drove by my friend’s house–not too long ago–intending to stop
I passed by instead
That evening my phone rang again and again
Where was I? Where was my friend?
His parents and siblings had been murdered.
The cops held him and did everything they could to get him to confess.
He still can’t convince himself they were wrong.
When I was a kid my parents bought an acre of land from Dad’s uncle for one dollar.
Sophistry and Solipsism in the New Millennium 