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| Image by Melissa Joskow / Media Matters |
Invade with your hot mouth lie
uncovered among the fragrance of the world!
Look at what comes Look at them An invasion
what marches toward us marches with night-
eyes An invasion To be invaded To be
“simply defending my country” To deafen
To defend “from cultural and ethnic replace
ment” The rest are in the light that bursts
into secret Where what are?
Things that begin when fire-
blue waves open fire on
the poor
parched heart
Author’s Note: The poem’s lines are borrowed from Pablo Neruda’s Love Sonnet “I” in his 100 Love Sonnets and from “El Paso Shooting Suspect’s Manifesto Echoes Trump’s Language,” by Peter Baker and Michael D. Shear, The New York Times, August 4, 2019.
Tina Barry is a freelance writer, poet, short fiction writer and curator. She is the author of Mall Flower (Big Table Publishing, 2016). Tina’s writing has been included in The Best Short Fictions 2016, Drunken Boat, Inch Magazine, Yes, Poetry, Connotation Press, and several anthologies including Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse, Feckless Cunt and A Constellation of Kisses. In 2018-2019, Tina conceived and curated “The Virginia Project,” a collaborative written word and visual art exhibition that celebrated Virginia Haggard, the partner of the artist Marc Chagall, and Haggard’s daughter Jean McNeil. Beautiful Raft, the writing that launched the exhibit, will be published this fall. Tina is a teaching artist at The Poetry Barn and Gemini Ink.