When you’re called,
you go, Sesshu says.
But I’m afraid
I won’t go far enough
to stop them
even though
people are dying.
And even though
people are dying,
I remain
Chicana, a woman
who won’t keep
this mouth,
or the other, shut.
So should I
get out of bed
to write?
Does what I
write matter?
Sesshu says: reread
Oscar Zeta Acosta’s
The Revolt of the Cockroach People.
Then I remember:
when you’re
called,
you go.
Copyright © 2025 by Diana Marie Delgado. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 21, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
