From “I am trying to carve out a world where people are not the sum total of their disaster” by Remica Bingham-Risher

From "I am trying to carve out a world where people are not the sum total of their disaster"
by Remica Bingham-Risher

I will barely touch the surface
of all it took to keep them here.

They taught us to nod to others in the street,
to holler love, to knead eggs and butter and flour
into yeast rolls larger than fists, to coax and heed the land.

Before Trump won his second term, my supervisor told me that his movement was dying. That these things always get violent before it dies. While I can see the facade decay, I know that it’s not gonna be over. Movements like these come in waves. As long as the rich want to gaslight the working class that the poor and the immigrant are holding them back, these movements will never full die. It’ll sleep. It’ll rest and grow strength.

We saw the warnings of MAGA during the Tea Party movement. I remember they invaded our libraries to have their pity party gatherings and orchestrate. Why I didn’t see the Valley turning red is beyond me. The poison has been in the well and it was slow to spread. Now we have Latinos for Trump who can’t form their own opinion, just parrot what they were taught like the good lapdogs they are.

Remica Bingham-Risher poem is about resilience, Black endurance, legacy and refusing to let trauma (personal/ancestral) define a person’s existence. I don’t know why this poem made me think of that moment in my life (as I am a Queer, masculine-presenting Latine person). Maybe it was the two lines I didn’t select for this quote: “Most will make happiness a footnote” and “Their suffering wasn’t everything.”

History will always remember the trauma, the disasters, regulating any joy to the background. Or not speaking on it at all. Maybe that is not all we should see? I don’t know.

I just know that I am tired.

You can read Bingham-Risher’s poem in full by visiting PoetryFoundation.org or by purchasing her book, Room Swept Home.