by Jeremy Nathan Marks
I will not forget what happened earlier today/last night/yesterday/
last week/last month/last year/this past decade
I will not un-hear “I can’t breathe” I will not un-see “I can’t breathe”
Now I can hardly mouth “take a knee”
I will not overlook the seizing of children from the arms
of their mothers and their fathers at the border
met with a jacket that said, I really don’t care do u?
I will not pretend there was no Merrick Garland
Birtherism, “Lock Her Up,” “Commie,” “Monster”
and “Nasty Woman”
I won’t overlook Access Hollywood and Charlottesville
Muslim Bans and “Stand Back/Stand By”
I do recall Russia, Ukraine, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn
William Barr, the emoluments clause, impeachment and tax returns
I won’t forget “Send Her Back” or ignore all those phoney words of outrage
by Senators and Representatives who now walk in complete lockstep
playing the country for fools with Judge Barrett and how “he’s learned his lesson”
I will not un-see the Second Lady of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
accosted buying groceries, called the n-word because she’s of color
I cannot reconcile how Covid became a “blessing from God”
because the right man contracted it at a hugging party for a judicial coup d’état
This is not normal
none of this is normal
there is more to democracy
than just the news cycle
There is the world
and our place in it
there is a country, burning
This is not normal
Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in London, Ontario. New work appears this fall in So It Goes, Boog City, Unlikely Stories, The Journal of Expressive Writing, The Last Leaves, Chiron Review, Dissident Voice, Ginosko, and Bewildering Stories.
