by Thomas DeFreitas
America is Bible and battery acid, Krispy Kreme and Christian soldiers, MAGA hats and “good people on both sides.” Forced birth, illegal miscarriages, classrooms from which history is deleted, whitewashed. Here we lock up refugees and confiscate their rosaries only to throw them away. Here we threaten families who display the wrong yard-signs. Here we say the Lord's Prayer at the end of twelve-step meetings, “not allied with any sect.” Liberty’s arm is tired from holding up that torch for all these bloody years. A voice-over announces the death, by embarrassment, of The New Colossus.
America is Deliverance and Don’t Say Gay. Fireworks on the Esplanade, the cannonade of 1812. Senatorial thoughts, congressional prayers. Spare the machine-gun, spoil the child. Wives submitting to their husbands, who give them black-and-blue merit-badges for overcooking the lasagna. America: a hot flat ounce of cola in a patriotic can. Plastic and persimmon. Sassafras and sadism.
America welcomes you if you’re One Of Us.
Thomas DeFreitas was born in Boston in 1969. A graduate of the Boston Latin School, he attended the University of Massachusetts, both in Boston and in Amherst. His poems have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Plainsongs, Ibbetson Street, Pensive, and elsewhere. His latest collection is Walking Between the Raindrops (Kelsay Books, 2025).
