Your tax dollars kill kids and other American dreams
It all seems very mundane, the sounds
of children running, heavy clomping
feet as they fast-dawdle down
pavement headed nowhere
so much as away from wherever
their parent’s voice commands, gleeful
cries receding into the safety of the middle
distance, a comfortable fade that still promises
tomorrow; until it’s gone, you can’t remember
to miss it. Here we still have pavement
and children running and screaming for
no good reason, here we still enjoy
the propaganda of the little things,
the tiny wonders we have been
taught are rare because we take them
from somewhere else. Somewhere,
you know where and where and where,
the future is up for debate, a marble
of hope twiddled between the very fingers
we pay to keep our promise alive, where
the sidewalks have all become memory and
the children just scream. The horrible sounds
the fingers make as they play the fiddle
of fate in the low hum of a benediction:
your tax dollars kill kids, your tax dollars kill kids,
and other American dreams. You feel it, don’t you,
that enclosed fortune, to live surrounded
by pavement that will never be debris.
I am not myself
In dreams I am not myself, sightless
like a poem written too soon. Touch here
is imperative, the tender tremble of
a frightened hand, timber of a safe voice
in the blue blood-black of night. Life here
can be porous, a fogged mirror soaking up
the violent precarity of wakefulness and leaving
a lush echo, a black indeterminate sound,
sounding oval and petal and gold. In dreams
I am not myself, warm, not yet wounded, and
willowing, a gentle cascade from what’s left
of my senses like the world can be
apart from me. But what becomes of reverie
when it goes under occupation. In your dreams,
am I only myself, levying the safety of this
continent and its wealth and its war
machine for hire? I might say the only home I have,
but I have it, and to claim is to maneuver, so
I must own the tactics of my land. In your
dreams, have we learned to fragile flesh, as
even without sight you know what it is to see
a corpse under cruel teeth in the bright white
phosphorous night? Sometimes, the dead look
like themselves. When you stand apart from
the world, do you still know how it feels
to watch the last houses crumble on
a ruined street? The cameras train
on tragedy. In your dreams, do we imperialize
your dreams, demanding the last space
you keep for yourself? I am sorry for asking.
In dreams I am not myself.
ISAAC PICKELL is a Black and Jewish poet, PhD candidate, and adjunct instructor in Detroit. A Cave Canem Fellow, Isaac is a graduate of Miami University’s Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing. He is the author of two works of poetry, the chapbook everything saved will be last (Black Lawrence Press, 2021) and the full-length collection It’s not over once you figure it out (Black Ocean, 2023). Isaac’s most recent work can be found in Brevity, Cincinnati Review, Copper Nickel, diode poetry journal, and Poetry Northwest. You can find him at isaacpickell.com.
AMANDA YSKAMP is a writer and collagist. Her artwork has appeared in such magazines as Black Rabbit, Riddled with Arrows, and Stoneboat. She lives on the 10-year flood plain of the Russian River, where she teaches writing and serves as a librarian at the local elementary school.
