& When They Come for Me (Reprise)
I can’t give you my eye,
nor a kidney, nor a second
right now. We have to hustle
up the block like antelopes
cus all the buses are
colonists. All the signs
are chandeliers, light
stuck in shambles.
I’m eating earth-
worms watching
neighbors become stars,
Grannies becoming idols, parents
become strangers. Our childhoods
were sundials. Adulthood sundered & stabbed
for the Sabbath. Our nations are out,
our capitals are overrun with word-rot.
I’m photographing the apocalypse
while watching history through the mouth
of a shield. I’m from conifers
peeling potpourri for the arrivals
needing helipads. Summon oblivion & still
I give my heart to the panthers
to the Palestinians cracking open
a skull-warm winter, screaming back we’re all the I
in nation—even when we’re scheduled to die.
Copyright © 2024 by Golden. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 26, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
“This poem is from a larger project of the same title, Reprise, which builds a continuous response to living in America from 2020 to today. This iteration in particular grapples with me witnessing the COVID-19 pandemic, Alzheimer’s, civil and world wars, genocides, death and death and death. The way I see and interact with the world will never be the same. And still, in the chaos of facing destruction, there’s a love to document, a family worth fighting for, a revolution worth freeing. Yes, we must die one day, and I hope we can still choose to live for one another.”
—Golden
Golden
