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breathe for George Floyd we
breathe for compassion we
do not know what that is we
another black man holy we
gone now George Floyd we
Ahmaud running street endless we
America scream & love we
do not know what love is we
breathe George Floyd flames we
next to you on a sp halt cho ke we
knee Am Am
e ri c a w e
Copyright © 2020 by Juan Felipe Herrera. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 14, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.
Yet the peach tree
still rises
& falls with fruit & without
birds eat it the sparrows fight
our desert
burns with trash & drug
it also breathes & sprouts
vines & maguey
with design by Anthony Cody
she ambles toward El Norte she remembers as she steps
wasps & spiders webbed in between the corn in Fowler
her mamá Concha’s story the fire she fanned to clear
the path through the thick burned stalks all this
she almost-touches the blueberries in Skagit Washington
& the line of men wrapped as cocoons and dark as amber
flecked honey at the line the only store in Firebaugh where
you can cash your check shirts twisted & whispered & upright
down in Illinois in Cobden you go through the back door