Amy Gordon
This Is an Earnest Request
I entreat you, o person,
sitting in front of your computer on a dark night
in a house that isn’t dark but over-lit,
causing strings of hatred to slink
through thick, invisible wires, linking
all of us in a vast web of complicity,
to stop,
else I am compelled, o person,
to sit in front of my computer,
on a bright, sunny day, to ask you to think
why when K. wrote an article
challenging the rollback
of auto emission standards, you felt the need
to tap missiles onto your screen,
project them into her backyard?
In case you need reminding, this is what you wrote:
I feel sorry for your husband.
And are you the same person, o person,
(It’s hard to imagine there is more than one of you)
who said: What sex acts did you have to do
to get your job?
And I say to you, invisible man or woman,
troll or dwarf, elf, or anonymous snowman,
let’s not tweet, you and I,
but rather, meet in a field
lit by the ancient star we call the sun.
Let us meet and look at each other,
and I will ask, How is your daughter?
and you will blink, and I will notice
you have dark, thick eyelashes
and a vulnerable mouth,
and I will say,
Let’s pick all the dandelions in the field that have gone to fuzz,
and then we’ll pull in a deep breath and blow,
watch the dissolution of all those gauzy moons,
the flight of innocent, starry seeds
as life seeks to renew itself,
thereby spawning a thousand suns
on your neighbor’s lawn,
which might take care of your need to be toxic.
Until the Darkness
I am mute
because I don’t know anymore
how to ask
the men in suits
to be kind.
I want to ask them,
Isn’t it difficult
to carry around an axe
day after day?
But I seem to have lost the words.
But when night’s door opens,
I step through,
speak every dialect on earth.
I ask the ants, can you please
rebuild the forests, leaf by leaf?
I want, in the darkness,
to unbend from anger.
Wasn’t there once a time
when to look up and see the stars was enough?
Please, I say to the migrating birds,
the geese who fly at night,
fly where you’ve always flown.
Amy Gordon is the author of numerous books for young readers, including When JFK Was My Father (Houghton Mifflin, 1999) and Painting the Rainbow (Holiday House, 2014), both works of historical fiction haunted by helpful ghosts. Her poems have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Aurorean, Plum, Blue Nib, and in the anthology Poems in the Aftermath (Indolent Books, 2018).
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