Poetry corner: This is Pfizer’s America

Written by Chloé Allyn
Illustrated by Victoria Decembert

This is Pfizer’s America
and I lied a little to get my vaccine,
This life — no, reality? Society?       World
Asks: can you take care of yourself? Can you
Stop worrying about black (light, dark)        brown (red, yellow)    
white?!
If anyone at the back of the line wants to
Complain
Remind them Daddy America says
“It’s your fault f*****,         it’s the color of your skin
It’s the sin of your bed, the circling bluebirds around
your head, not           my clobber, not my   police baton
The red color of your blood doesn’t look like
Mine
Your liberal heart beats and mine
Does not, get back in the dirt, go back to the barn.”

So, then we argue, and a mural is done, a Twain book is burned
And another mother loses a son      another son is lunch
Truncheons and AI and the dial on the stove is
Stuck, Daddy’s coastlines are   receding like high-stakes hair
Pound the Gulf like a storied ass
Listen!         inside and outside are riddled with his touch
If I were a plant I’d’ve lost my limbs by now,
Is it my fault that my mind is radioactive when I’ve grown
In bloody soil?         I’m not long gone
Or gone gone but
I’ve already Eaten the cancer while watching cartoons
Remember. Daddy hates it when you break
The chain. Daddy hates it when his grandbabies
Come out with a new taste for the truth