I'll keep explaining-because maybe you still don't get it
Those children in California (substitute any state), dead from gunfire-
Let me begin again in a little roof garden with my friend
I mean he mocks me lovingly on the roof and at the library book sale
My friend is not a banker but a prison activist
He used to be a philosopher, but like many philosophers, he's taken a turn
that should be easy to understand
The trajectory from philosopher to activist is like the curve of a single brushstroke across a large canvas
Artists in the fifties paid attention to that
I hate flat language like this, but I'm pretty flat
sometimes. You have to be your own dictator
and the law is, hate yourself if you have to, but don't stop doing the thing you said you were going to do
As I tell my daughters often
I admit, gripping my T-shirt
I wish I were writing in prose an unfolding intensity that shocks history professors and prison activists equally
Later, in the grass, we'll practice gymnastics and that way contribute our sweat
to Our Ephemeral City


About This Poem
"I write from experience. 'Emotion is a site of unraveling' is a line from Judith Butler, who helps me to understand my experiences as I have them. Poetry is a form of philosophy, of activism and of history, but it is also only movement in the grass."
-Julie Carr

About Julie Carr
Julie Carr is the author of "Objects from a Borrowed Confession" (Ahsahta Press, forthcoming in 2017). She teaches at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and lives in Denver.

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The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day[at]poets.org.


(c) 2017 Julie Carr. Originally published in Poem-a-Day, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate