by Clara Altfeld
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O America, I too fear my own demise.
I thought nothing was so permanent
that it could never be undone,
but in you, constants shift
and movement stills.
I swore before God in a city you promised to love
that I would honestly demean myself
that I would support the Constitution
of the United States—that sickened poem
written in praise to itself.
Attorney comes from an Old French word
meaning to turn to. And if I had not sworn myself
to your wretched service, America, I would turn
away and away and away.
And in the turn: a shift, a settling, and the past,
silky and surreal, would come rewinding back.
The hearing, unheard. No judge, no gavel,
no order of removal for the mother and daughter
I had promised to protect.
We walk backwards out from the courtroom,
Wrinkle our suits and hang them in the closet
Unwrite, undemand, unmove the pleasure of the court.
Become strangers again, part ways.
I, reversed to my little luxuries, spinning in place.
Mother and daughter, to unend their journey,
undo footprints in the desert, the jungle.
Leave the sand unmarked, the Darien Gap uncrossed.
Let the boat rise from the waters
like the dawning sun. Water will expel
from lungs. Eyes will unclose.
Husband and four children will unsleep
their watery sleep. Shelter from demons
as a family. Oh, America,
haven’t you always been this way?
Under the shine and sparkle,
hollow and hostile and unholy?
Buried beneath the bones and rot
of bodies once loved?
Oh, America, let me write you
a beating heart.
Bring yourself back to life so I can see you
in the firelight.
Clara Altfeld is a lawyer in Houston, Texas. She hopes to own a cat one day. This poem was written in workshop with KT Herr.
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