Protest poetry has deep roots in the United States. Poets have used their verses to oppose slavery, the Vietnam War, segregation and racial oppression, the Iraq war, and more recently, discrimination and police violence against African-Americans.
So it’s not entirely surprising that there’s been a resurgence of political poetry in the Trump era. “More of it is circulating more widely,” said Stephen Burt, a poet and poetry critic. “It has always been there, but this seems really big.”
In the months following the 2016 election, poets have rushed out “resistance”-themed anthologies, joined marches and rallies to recite their verses, and composed poems that address some of the most divisive issues of our time.
Here are five poems that speak to this moment in American politics and history. If you’re worried about the state of the country, or the world, these poems won’t offer much reassurance. But giving comfort or solace isn’t really the point.
‘The Moon After Election Day’
By Alex Dimitrov
I’m looking at the moon tonight,
the closest it’s been to Earth since 1948
and feel relieved we can do little to ruin it.
That can’t be true, you say, and for a moment
even the moon’s loneliness escapes isolation
and depends on something else. It’s attached.
Like us and what we abandon. Us
and the evil we refuse. The same evil
we share history with, the thin membrane
between you or me and the worst of life.
It’s already past midnight and another election
is over in the United States of America.
The oceans will not continue into infinity.
Nor will our money. Nor will this suffering.
We have voted and proven again
we do not know one another. I am trying
so hard to understand this country, I tell you
even as I’m about to fail loving you (I know this)
in the way people need to be loved
which is without deception, which is almost
impossible. Don’t you love it though, you say,
and I remember the first time I saw you in a room
without anyone else. Don’t you love the moon?
And because it’s easy to say it, I do, I make sure
to tell you I do. Despite the news I knew years ago:
no one saves anyone. We’re on the moon.
‘On the Fifth Day’
By Jane Hirshfield
On the fifth day
the scientists who studied the rivers
were forbidden to speak
or to study the rivers.
The scientists who studied the air
were told not to speak of the air,
and the ones who worked for the farmers
and the ones who worked for the bees.
Someone, from deep in the Badlands,
began posting facts.
The facts were told not to speak
and were taken away.
The facts, surprised to be taken, were silent.
Now it was only the rivers
that spoke of the rivers,
and only the wind that spoke of its bees,
while the unpausing factual buds of the fruit trees
continued to move toward their fruit.
The silence spoke loudly of silence,
and the rivers kept speaking,
of rivers, of boulders and air.
In gravity, earless and tongueless,
the untested rivers kept speaking.
Bus drivers, shelf stockers,
code writers, machinists, accountants,
lab techs, cellists kept speaking.
They spoke, the fifth day,
‘If They Should Come for Us’
By Fatimah Asghar
these are my people & I find
them on the street & shadow
through any wild all wild
my people my people
a dance of strangers in my blood
the old woman’s sari dissolving to wind
bindi a new moon on her forehead
I claim her my kin & sew
the star of her to my breast
the toddler dangling from stroller
hair a fountain of dandelion seed
at the bakery I claim them too
the sikh uncle at the airport
who apologizes for the pat
down the muslim man who abandons
his car at the traffic light drops
to his knees at the call of the azan
& the muslim man who sips
good whiskey at the start of maghrib
the lone khala at the park
pairing her kurta with crocs
my people my people I can’t be lost
when I see you my compass
is brown & gold & blood
my compass a muslim teenager
snapback & high-tops gracing
the subway platform
mashallah I claim them all
my country is made
in my people’s image
if they come for you they
come for me too in the dead
of winter a flock of
aunties step out on the sand
their dupattas turn to ocean
a colony of uncles grind their palms
& a thousand jasmines bell the air
my people I follow you like constellations
we hear the glass smashing the street
& the nights opening their dark
our names this country’s wood
for the fire my people my people
the long years we’ve survived the long
years yet to come I see you map
my sky the light your lantern long
ahead & I follow I follow
By Maggie Smith
If there are fewer stars now
than when I was a child,
I can’t say
which are missing,
who was the last to see them.
Is it not a crime
unless we call it a crime?
It is difficult to document
a boat full of stars
Stars lying in the sand
wearing small shoes.
Add that to the report:
some of the stars washed up
in small shoes.
By Javier Zamora
it was clear they were hungry
with their carts empty the clothes inside their empty hands
they were hungry because their hands
were empty their hands in trashcans
the trashcans on the street
the asphalt street on the red dirt the dirt tax payers pay for
up to that invisible line visible thick white paint
visible booths visible with the fence starting from the booths
booth road booth road booth road office building then the fence
fence fence fence
it started from a corner with an iron pole
always an iron pole at the beginning
those men those women could walk between booths
say hi to white or brown officers no problem
the problem I think were carts belts jackets
we didn’t have any
or maybe not the problem
our skin sunburned all of us spoke Spanish
we didn’t know how they had ended up that way
on that side
we didn’t know how we had ended up here
we didn’t know but we understood why they walk
the opposite direction to buy food on this side
this side we all know is hunger