And I'd like to close now with the first poem
of the new manuscript, Fire: Poems Against Pandemic.
"The Week Ruth Bader Ginsburg Died."
"The week Ruth Bader Ginsburg died
was the week birds fell dead from the sky.
Parched trees exploded back into trees of flaming lumber,
then ash.
It was a week wracked with grief, a low moaning sound,
and the useless wind.
Fears shut the cabinets, sounding hollow
in the big empty.
Not a ring nor a murmur.
Not a touch sustaining some.
Others flinch at the chance, the sameness.
Judge me not, all seem to say, and let freedom ring.
Let some sing.
It was the week hurricanes unleashed across the land
seeking out justice, justice.
Just us sat at the narrow margins, then
the center of our own destinies imagined.
It was the week the bare technology of dying,
of killing, fastened its bloody hold.
It was the week when glaciers failed and sailed off
into the new world.
At our doorstep, death in all its moldy clothes.
Death by internet.
We watched.
We unclothed what we were to begin with.
Heat seeking missiles.
Rocket launchers.
Platoons of possibility.
The week Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, it
was as if no one else had died.
No other toll so singular.
No other hope, yes, hope.
The week Ruth Bader Ginsburg died,
it was like after they killed Martin Luther King
Jr., Bobby Kennedy, Malcolm X, and assassinated our president.
The week Ruth Bader Ginsburg died,
it was like I was 14 years old again
and in perpetual lock down.
Except that I'm not.
Now I have rights.
Rights we fought for, and birthed,
and we're never going back."
Thank you.