by Imogen Arate
Dying stars burn the brightest
Europe's birth rate is falling
Italian towns offer abandoned
homes on the cheap
Even in a COVID year
nearly 1-0-0-0
wo/men and children
died on the Mediterranean
in pursuit of safety
The Sonoran took its biggest gulp
in 10 years
as desiccated remains are picked
from between its gritty teeth
to stage a caravan
One in five American households
speaks a language other than English
but my people can’t get in a
Best-Pic nominee
without the label “foreign”
Be grateful that you are now
presented with a choice between
Black and White
Prostrate melaniferous bodies
weave into a shroud
covering the distance between
George Floyd and today
Be grateful for crumbs that drop
from the high table
as we scramble
and gladiate in spectacle
for droppings
Half a million seemed like
an impossible number
Last year Valentine’s Day
was still lonely
but in person
Be grateful
Why aren’t we grateful
Why are we so ungrateful
We are given a choice now
Isn’t it enough
A cloth cover is the real
hindrance to liberty
The 2020 “I voted” sticker
a high-priced memorabilia
for the lives risked
to those other than minorities
forced hyphenation
worn as a crown
trudge past other saintly feasts
lay bare the sacrifice
Be grateful for the little things
The big ones are for the rarified
the falling birth rate
the fear of extinction
I guess they always knew
Dying stars burn the brightest
Rage
rage against the dying of the light
Imogen Arate is an award-winning Asian-American poet and writer and the Executive Producer and Host of the weekly poetry podcast Poets and Muses. She has written in four languages and published in two. Her work was most recently featured in the Global Poemic, Rigorous and The Hong Kong Review.