Menace to
after June Jordan
Nightly my enemies feast on my comrades
like maggots on money. Money being my enemy
as plastic is my enemy. My enemy everywhere
and in my home as wifi is
a money for me to reach my comrades
and kills my house plants. My enemy
is distance growing dark, distance growing
politely in my pocket as connection.
I must become something my enemies can’t eat, don’t have
a word for yet, my enemies being literate as a drone is
well-read and precise and quiet, as when I buy something
such as a new computer with which to sing against my enemies,
there is my enemy, silent and personal.
Copyright © 2020 by Taylor Johnson. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 18, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.
“I do think I can get to a place, one day, internally, where I believe I don’t have an enemy. However, given my material condition in this country, given the material conditions of my people in this country, given the fact that the descendents of enslaved Africans in this country have yet to receive reparations, I’m letting myself practice my anger. This is a draft of that practice, which will continue to be drafted as long as there isn’t liberation for African and Indigenous people globally. This is to say, my enemies are those who block my peace.”
—Taylor Johnson
Taylor Johnson
Taylor Johnson is the author of Inheritance (Alice James Books, 2020).