Joy Ladin
Make America Great Again
Put on your best shoes—
mine have holes in them—
and let’s make our country great again.
I’m not talking about the election.
America has been waiting over two hundred years
to be better than its citizens,
to color outside our color lines,
to rise, once and for all
above our festering hatreds.
I’m not talking about the election.
It’s time to put our ears to the ground and listen
to America rehearsing its declaration of independence
from its thirst for dammed-up rivers, its loneliness for the frogs
that are harder and harder to hear
when spring comes again—America wishes
it could stop missing them—
from the wildness of its fires, from its adolescent passions
to screw whatever it can.
I’m not talking about the election. The election
was America feeling restless, hopeless, achingly bad
about the robots running its factories
and the opiates writing its prescriptions
for how to stop hurting when you know
you will never stop hurting again,
the election was America choosing
what it never wanted
and wanting what it never had,
its hands were busy rigging its systems
to broadcast its recurring nightmares
as widely as possible
in the hopes that those of us who truly love it
will wake it up at last.
It’s time for us, America’s mismatched halves,
to make friends in real life, off the internet,
it’s time for me to put on your shoes—
mine have holes in them—
and for us to walk, if not together,
at least in the same direction
and buy America a beer
and get teary about our childhoods
and heartbroken about our futures
until we are sure, one hundred percent,
that we will go in the morning to our different jobs
with the same throbbing in our heads.
It’s hard these days to tell truth from lies,
to remember the fertility of the plains
and the sunburnt hands that work them
while riding crowded subways,
to remember the towers of tiny apartments
filled with people, old and young,
worried about paying rent
while we are logging forests we hope to God
don’t have spotted owls in them.
But we all remember how to love,
and we long to be forgiven
no matter how hard
we find it to forgive,
we still watch shows whose heroes—
we still have heroes—respond to fear
with courage instead of hatred.
I sometimes remember, you do too,
to say “us” instead of “them,”
so there is no reason for either of us to fail to respond
to America’s personals ad,
running on every horizon:
Middle-aged country—
preferred pronouns “we” and “ours”—
seeks a few hundred million people
who love sunrise, sunset, shining seas
and all the land between them.
Must be willing to shoulder two hundred years of baggage.
Must love dogs, children, diverse eco-systems,
a living wage for an honest day’s work,
clothing the naked, lending a hand.
Must speak both country and city.
Don’t bother to reply
unless you are willing to listen.
Joy Ladin is the author of seven books of poetry, including Lambda Literary Award finalists Impersonation and Transmigration. Her memoir of gender transition, Through the Door of Life, was a 2012 National Jewish Book Award finalist. Her work has been recognized with a National Endowment of the Arts fellowship and a Fulbright Scholarship, among other honors. She holds the Gottesman Chair in English at Yeshiva University. Her poems and essays are available at joyladin.com.
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