poem
Volume 28, Number 4

A Political Country

On Friday, my father tells me not to talk Politics. 
On Saturday, he assures his expat South African friends that his daughter’s activism
          saturates him with hope.

On Sunday, he shows me the desolate family farm.
On Monday, a national shutdown begins. 

On Tuesday, a man pulls a gun at a barricade while I’m ladling sunscreen.
On Wednesday, a national march strolls the rich side of town. 
On Thursday, we open a barricade for an ambulance of suicide/vans of evacuees. 
On Friday, my boyfriend hides in my house because he is Namibian.

There are men with cricket bats at the doughnut counter. But don’t talk politics here.


—Nica Cornell