Hope
always the hopeless asked to give others hope
the ones pushed up against wall after wall
when you’re done unpinning yourself
from the wall, please give hope
those who work twice as hard to seem half as good
being asked to do one more thing
we need to be seen
because things are not going well
and the crows are up to no good
Copyright © 2017 by Ali Liebegott. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 20, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.
“I often think of the expression, ‘You have to work twice as hard to be viewed half as good,’ used for women and people of color. Marginalized people are often asked to be the patient educators to non-marginalized people. I think this poem wrestles with the intrinsic unfairness of that.”
—Ali Liebegott
Ali Liebegott
Ali Liebegott is the author of the novels Cha-Ching! (City Lights, 2013), The IHOP Papers (Carroll & Graf, 2007), and The Beautifully Worthless (Suspect Thoughts, 2005).