Notes from the Civil Discourse Committee

A Thorn Crown of Sonnets for the Obama Era


It was “the first time” I took my daughter 
to a protest. She was three weeks old and
my ligaments, my language still loose,
the ground beneath me precarious—
“I was in a state of knowing”—what it
means for life to claim you as a vessel, 
for my body to become a border,
the truth of—“the world she had crossed into”
“can we begin” —with the children picked off 
across the barbed wire fence by snipers
“I recognize this is difficult”
—to question the smallest of givens
“none of the words” you speak ever name us.
Do you understand why some things must break?

*****

“Do you understand” why some things must break?
—I  have tried “to be an American”
—It was a posture built on compliance
and selective memory that skin and 
origin story do not preclude me 
from “eligibility for a dream”
—that a parent’s exile can be upcycled
“a life in another landscape”—It was
a posture of last resort. “The first time”
I met an elected official was 
at a protest—“he was seated on a stage”
—for a ceremony I was outside 
—reporters asked why are you here today?
“because they are dancing on our graves”

		*****

Because they are dancing on our graves 
when they aren’t bulldozing them, elections leave 
bitter dregs in the mouth. A few years later
we arrive at no he’s a decent man—
as opposed to an Arab “one candidate
said of another”—defending him 
to his own kind—I have been corrected
whenever I recount this American
experience. “Even the decent”-as-
opposed-to-an-Arab man goes on to
in the vernacular of his people
bomb bomb bomb. And still “the longing for
his era of such decorous”—death thrives.
—it was a posture of late empire.

		*****

It was a posture of late empire
to “resist settler colonialism” 
—while making friends and influencing
people. “Why am I here today? I’m asked
this question often”—by those who made it
inevitable. “And yes, I would love
to go back home”—even that dismissal
requires something other than “peace.” More
like a new language for the past that blooms
wild on our hillsides—crushes verb tenses—
an unsettling—a fresh old map—or just
an ending, of your unchecked violence
against us. The lifting of your shadow
starving us for light, wilting all that lives.