Today's poem is by Jessica Greenbaum

If They Ask, Tell Them
       

vinegar and baking soda run the world
and it doesn't hurt to have a pack of matches
and an onion. Parchment paper, thick socks
and a rechargeable light you wear around
your neck, essential. A pencil sharpener, Q-tips
to fix the engine, a carbon knife if you are
careful, and band aids anyway. Tell them we've
been acting like everything's normal but
something catastrophic must have spawned
the plague of gunplay and power grabs, the
buying of judges and stocking of extremists
like sandbags against democracy's tide. Tell them
we will vote in our candidates; these trials,
like Salem's, will end, and the women-haters
the assault weapon idolaters and unapologetic
fascists will be summarily disgraced and
tossed out of town where there will be no
trees or breeze, only the pollution they sent
downstream, the banned books too wet to
burn for cooking, the asbestos of their own
fantasies inhaled too deeply; tell them we
will educate their children about curiosity
itself, about the cosmos and history, math, poetry
dance, carpentry, economics, art—everything
under the sun—leaving only the science-
refusing adults killing each other for asking
directions. For those neo-refugees, happily once,
anti-refugee, and now without critical thinking
or shoes, remember how one mentality—just one—
was forbidden to enter the promised land.

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Copyright © 2024 Jessica Greenbaum All rights reserved
from Poetry London
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission