by Margaret Rozga
Sarah Huckabee Sanders appears in the center
of my television screen. Her head and shoulders
in sharp focus, that camera angle fixed as if
to convey steadfastness. As if.
In the background a stretch of hazy space as if
she appears out of nowhere. On either side of her
jewel blue, likely furniture, maybe facing couches,
though placed at such a distance from each other
as if to constrain conversation. The camera angle
cuts off a complete view, so they appear flat
surfaces as if they were beds.
She continues to talk, about surviving cancer,
about leaving her children at Christmas to fly
in the dark to Afghanistan in the entourage
of he who she lets remain unnamed. As if.
She moves on.
Little Rock’s Central High School, her school,
she says. Art on the State Capitol grounds now
celebrates the Little Rock Nine, African American
students unwelcomed, demeaned, threatened,
abused when they integrated the school. As if
to erase sixty-six years, she claims in this way
civil rights history is with her, as if her sneer
Her service in the administration of the
president she traveled with in the dark
another as if.
Editor’s note: A proposed bill that would have prohibited the use of public school funds to teach the 1619 Project curriculum has failed to make it out of an Arkansas House committee. —THV11, February 9, 2023
Margaret Rozga served as a voting rights volunteer in rural Alabama in 1965 and was a participant in Milwaukee’s 1967-68 fair housing marches. Her fifth book is Holding My Selves Together: New & Selected Poems (Cornerstone Press 2021).
