Today's poem is by Karen Llagas

Good Americans
       

The mayor says we're all in this together. And Asian Americans,
more than ever, only need to be, the best Americans.

Hard-headed parents: mine casino-hopped,
did as they pleased, like real Americans,

whose streets are swept safe, whose slurs fall like sparks
on my masked sisters tending to Americans,

while coyotes roam San Francisco at night.
Imagine these lands unpeopled, empty of Americans.

Undocumented farmers, food workers, most essential:
a country separates you from exceptional Americans,

armed to be happy, to be released back
to their money, who want to shop, be good Americans.

If I say our inhales are braided to their exhales,
is that un-American?

Invisible virus, we rapture and rage. You rupture us whole.
I live in contradictions, while American.

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Copyright © 2024 Karen Llagas All rights reserved
from

Nũr Mélange: A Ghazal Anthology

Glass Lyre Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission