In this timely poem, U.S. Army veteran Dwight Gray offers a stateside soldier’s take on xenophobia.
—
A.M. Radio.
You drive together in an unremarkable sedan,
the a.m. radio station comes in and out of tune. You’d forgotten
in the flat lands how hills could churn the contents
of your last lunch, pin them to your ribs, or make you eat
it again. Still flying upward a split second after the road’s
fallen from your wheels. Atop the next hill the signal comes
through. A man’s voice speaks of those people, then the signal
cuts out. Between the static you piece it together.
The caller wants those people to go back where they came from.
You begin to picture faces, the translator who risked everything
feeding you dolma and tea so sweet sugar settled in the glass.
There was your driver from Mexico, volunteering every job
by day, studying civics by night. You look at each other,
laugh uneasily, turn the radio off just in time – when you turn
back to the road, cresting a blind hill, nearly meet a pickup truck
coming the other way. Both vehicles swerve from the center.
***
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