In the city in which I works best
there is no you. Understand that
understanding means an opening
where there should be a wall. If you build
a bridge it'll just be broken
once a foot becomes steps. The signal
we saw in faraway smoke said
the need for help is a warning
that the helper will soon become
the one in need. Gold is gold
because we put a limit on the number
of hands that can hold it. How could you
disgrace this nation built on the backs bent under
the weight of the forest that felled them?
If a thousand tulips insist on their colors,
the field of green will still be green. Still,
out of the many, one is the only pronoun
we can find room for. The point of every
dollar we've earned is to prove to ourselves
our own favor. And God is the green who favors
our greens. O, say. We light by our own gun
the scope from which we'll never escape.
AMERICAN BEATITUDES by Emma Bolden | Sandalwood Poetry Reed Diffuser
$15.00Price
Emma Bolden is the author of a memoir, The Tiger and the Cage (Soft Skull), and the poetry collections House Is an Enigma, medi(t)ations, and Maleficae. Her fourth poetry collection, God Elegy, is forthcoming from BOA Editions. An NEA Fellowship recipient, she is an editor of Screen Door Review.
