Trembling Ghosts
It didn’t matter
that women were silly putty
shaped in your hands,
discarded;
nor did it matter
that this Muslim had a name-Assad,
and a wife and a daughter
who whispered American dreams.
The only America you know
was your brand-
big, blustering, bombastic words:
“Make America great again”
worn on your silly baseball hat,
forgetting America
is the Mexican
standing by the wall,
(built by whom?)
and who to keep out:
my Holocaust ancestors
the Irish and the poverty of potatoes
the Sudanese lost boy who has walked
miles in the blazing hot desert,
the Syrian doctor
whose children were doused to death
with chemicals,
the African Americans, who once were slaves,
and if some have their way
in this topsy-turvy law and order world,
will be slaves once again.
The ghosts and skeletons
burned and buried
tremor in disbelief:
This is not America.
America is not free.
“America never was
America to me.” (*)
Langston Hughes
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