Terence Degnan
I have no time for the poets
who declare this emerging era
with no sense of accountability
as if the borders will melt
in the rain
and the tanks
will remove their own rivets
and a woman in hijab
simply wandering down a sidewalk
will forget to check her peripheries
in a neighborhood she’s never traversed
if this time is ours
men will have to be struck
after all
and before
are created equal
and replaced with creatures
and we’ll have to do away
with creation
we will have to accept our place
in the spilling evolution
before we abandon our properties
before we begin to share the squares again
before squares can return to us
as meandering meadows
before the winds
are to pass through fields of blades
and the coal can be left
inside the belly of a mountain
someone will have to pull a brick
from our southern wall
and pass a note through
to her neighbor
somebody will have to shred the flags
and sew the strips together
we will have to blend the stars
with the union jacks again
we will have to declare
our independence from old declarations
if we are to make new ones
if we are to accept ourselves
amongst equal creatures
somebody will have to curse the golden altars
someone else will have to walk an elder god
from the church to the temple
I have no time for infancy of thought
when it comes to the emerging world
I haven’t a second of breath
to waste on the waiters
I know the seeds
are eventual
I know the bees
deserve equal opportunity
but I have hands for sowing
I have been handed
the knowledge that accompanies
my right to ancestry
my coat is lined
with surrender flags
its leather was once
the binding of a Bible
my buttons are made from rivets
that once held together wars
Terence Degnan is the author of The Small Plot Beside the Ventriloquist’s Grave (Sock Monkey Press, 2012) and Still Something Rattles (Sock Monkey Press, 2016). His poems have appeared most recently in the journal The New Southerner and in the anthology Resist Much / Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance (Spuyten Duyvil, 2017), edited by curates and co-hosts the monthly Poets Settlement series in Brooklyn. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter.
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