Today, the hate of the world weighs heavy, and I must remain a poet, close my wide eyes to fireworks, keep mostly to myself this unacceptable sadness, renderings of a split too recent, still too red, still too Confederate and Union, still too Democrat and Republican, still too bleeding intolerance. It’s complicated – it’s not that I loathe America. I think it’s the heaviness of decades, iron infused rage leaking into every conversation, anthems slicing us to bits, mixing us up in a thick, coagulating bag, shaken, breathless against plastic, poured back on the table for piecing together. No slogan can mend us now, you see, no pledge heal what crusts beneath a weakly bandaged country, no quotes, no t-shirts, no license plates can cover the acute infection of still contending flags. Don’t believe me? Look around. Examine our scarred nation yourself. Hear curses of hatted sign carriers, barn painters, slogan criers. Watch the way on the street we avoid each other’s eyes. We have made ourselves sick. Untreatable. Sure, we can try a skin graph or two. Clip and stitch the thin, angry skin that still connects us. But where is the sterilized needle we need? What synthetic thread has power to mend after hatred? And besides, someone forgot to knot the end, their careful sewing quickly come undone. We have come undone. We’ve fallen, ripped apart again, ungentle, one frayed faction at a time. -Katherine Gotthardt
Posted in Katherine's Coffeehouse
