Ecocide,
genocide, slavery
and war are the four horsemen
of American greatness.
America didn’t invent
these riders of the apocalypse
but has embraced them wholeheartedly
from her first day to her latest.
Ask the felled forests
or the disappeared tribes
or those paraded in the markets
or the lands invaded.
America rose
and became great
and exceptional and indispensable
and will founder on the same steeds.
Jon Taylor is the author of Berry Picker’s Blues, a volume of Michigan/Northwoods/Upper Peninsula poems. He can be reached at taylor.jon440(at)gmail.com.