Tuesday poem #320 : Emma Bolden : AMERICAN BEATITUDES

In the city in which I works best

there is no you. Understand that

understanding means an opening

where there should be a wall. If you build

a bridge it’ll just be broken

once a foot becomes steps. The signal

we saw in faraway smoke said

the need for help is a warning

that the helper will soon become

the one in need. Gold is gold

because we put a limit on the number

of hands that can hold it. How could you

disgrace this nation built on the backs bent under

the weight of the forest that felled them?

If a thousand tulips insist on their colors,

the field of green will still be green. Still,

out of the many, one is the only pronoun

we can find room for. The point of every

dollar we’ve earned is to prove to ourselves

our own favor. And God is the green who favors

our greens. O, say. We light by our own gun

the scope from which we’ll never escape.

Emma Bolden is the author of three full-length collections of poetry – House Is An Enigma (Southeast Missouri State University Press), medi(t)ations (Noctuary Press, 2016) and Maleficae (GenPop Books, 2013) – and four chapbooks. The recipient of a 2017 Creative Writing Fellowship from the NEA, her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, The Best Small Fictions, and such journals as theMississippi Review, The Rumpus, StoryQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, New Madrid, TriQuarterly, the Indiana Review, Shenandoah, the Greensboro Review, andThe Journal. She currently serves as Associate Editor-in-Chief for Tupelo Quarterly. You can find out more at EmmaBolden.com.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan