Sonnet for the Republic, 2018

This was the first Fourth of July I can ever remember people joking about civil war

because it felt better to tweet in jest about #SecondCivilWar than to let that sink in.

I know I’m getting older when I repeatedly remark on the watermelon’s ripeness,

that reddening pink that’s so sweet, at the family pool party, where I enjoy the company

and don’t talk about politics—& don’t even want to, there’s too fucking much to say,

I’ve decided to just be kind to the humans I encounter IRL. Floated in the pool

until clouds and thunder, then an off and on of noncommittal rain. Corn in the husk.

Grilled kielbasa. Salads. It’s legal to buy fireworks in my state now. I hate it.

Whether in war or joy, the rocket’s red blare, released by every other Joe or Tyrone,

becomes a fusillade. People on Twitter were writing parody Civil War-letters,

and that trend as a whole was funny in a way that funny trends are usually not,

at least to me. They made me belly-laugh without laughing, that solar-plexus

warming like a hotplate. The home of life-force, all the mystic traditions say,

and though it already feels embattled, it rallies, because what else can it do?

In 2018, I’ve been working on my feet

In 2018, I’ve been working on my feet, which are, frankly, disgusting. I saw at the calluses with a tool with sharp holes, like a grater. I coax ingrown nails to come out where I can see them. I fumigate for fungus. I paint to hide shame.

In 2018, I’ve been working on shoulder strength, push-ups and planking. The closer I get to the ground, the harder it is to support my own weight.

I work on friendship, work on writing, work on the c-major scale for guitar.

In 2018, the democracy’s battered. I’m getting fatter. Now my dog is on a diet. I study how the president triggers my past powerlessness in the face of my father. Patriarchy is real, so I’m working on my feet and my shoulders. I’m working on my face and my fingers. I’m working on belief.

In 2018, I’m sequestering grief in the opposing big toes where the nails have been buried by the pointy-toed pumps of the eighties. Short of tearing them out, I welcome the pain. I wonder if this counts as self-mutilation. I wonder if, as with laboratory rats, this grooming is a sign of distress.

It is 2018, and thousands of immigrant children are in cages at the border. It is 2018, and the president’s family has made billions of dollars while they charitably give up their salaries. Or they contemptuously laugh at their ridiculous salaries. I bet their feet look real good. I bet they offer them up to subservient faces beneath them.

At night, I cover my feet in cream, pull on socks and let them tenderize. Once I walked eight miles on a beach in the hopes that this would work like an emery board. It was also a way to escape some relatives’ “We got ours” politics. My feet were rougher, not smoother, at the end.