April 29: America Is Loving Me to Death
Martha
America Is Loving Me to Death
Michael Kleber-Diggs
acrostic golden shovel
America is loving me to death, loving me to death slowly, and I
Mainly try not to be disappeared here, knowing she won’t pledge
Even tolerance in return. Dear God, I can’t offer allegiance.
Right now, 400 years ago, far into the future―it’s difficult to
Ignore or forgive how despised I am and have been in the
Centuries I’ve been here—despised in the design of the flag
And in the fealty it demands (lest I be made an example of).
In America there’s one winning story—no adaptations. The
Story imagines a noble, grand progress where we’re all united.
Like truths are as self-evident as the Declaration states.
Or like they would be if not for detractors like me, the ranks of
Vagabonds existing to point out what’s rotten in America,
Insisting her gains come at a cost, reminding her who pays, and
Negating wild notions of exceptionalism—adding ugly facts to
God’s-favorite-nation mythology. Look, victors get spoils; I know the
Memories of the vanquished fade away. I hear the enduring republic,
Erect and proud, asking through ravenous teeth Who do you riot for?
Tamir? Sandra? Medgar? George? Breonna? Elijah? Philando? Eric? Which
One? Like it can’t be all of them. Like it can’t be the entirety of it:
Destroyed brown bodies, dismantled homes, so demolition stands
Even as my fidelity falls, as it must. She erases my reason too, allows one
Answer to her only loyalty test: yes or no, Michael, do you love this nation?
Then hates me for saying I can’t, for not burying myself under
Her fables where we’re one, indivisible, free, just, under God, her God.
----
Have y'all heard about the hot new poetic form, the golden shovel? Seriously. It was invented by Terrance Hayes, in homage to Gwendolyn Brooks: in his poem, "The Golden Shovel", reading the last word of each line gives you her poem "We Real Cool", vertically.
Poets have run with the idea in all kinds of clever directions -- using last words to spell out lines from other poems, prose quotes, or Cardi B lyrics...! (I wasn't kidding when I said it's hot. Terrance Hayes, Ravi Shankar, and Patricia Smith put together an anthology a few years back of golden shovel poems specifically building on the work of Gwendolyn Brooks and over 200 top-name poets contributed. It's not every decade a new poetic form drops, I guess!)
Today's Michael Kleber-Diggs poem is a golden shovel, as you'll see if you go back and try that vertical reading of the last words. It's also, astoundingly, an acrostic poem, where the first letter of each line also reveals a hidden message. I love the contrast of it: so much skill and artistry being used to address something so raw and ugly.
When we were very young:
2025: Greensickness, Laurel Chen [whoa! This is also a Gwendolyn Brooks homage.]
2024: from Gaza, Summer 2006, Jasmine Donahaye
2023: June, Alex Dimitrov
2022: Poem to My Child, If Ever You Shall Be, Ross Gay
2021: Choi Jeong Min, Franny Choi
2020: Earl, Louis Jenkins
2019: Kul, Fatimah Asghar
2018: My Life Was the Size of My Life, Jane Hirshfield
2017: I Would Ask You To Reconsider The Idea That Things Are As Bad As They’ve Ever Been, Hanif Abdurraqib
2016: Tired, Langston Hughes
2015: Democracy, Langston Hughes
2014: Postscript, Seamus Heaney
2013: The Ghost of Frank O’Hara, John Yohe
2012: All Objects Reveal Something About the Body, Catie Rosemurgy
2011: Prayer, Marie Howe
2010: The Talker, Chelsea Rathburn
2009: There Are Many Theories About What Happened, John Gallagher
2008: bon bon il est un pays, Samuel Beckett
2007: Root root root for the home team, Bob Hicok
2006: Fever 103°, Sylvia Plath
2005: King Lear Considers What He’s Wrought, Melissa Kirsch