It's Getting Hot in My City
So that we might recover
Welcome, and a warm first hello to the newcomers!
I’m so happy you’re here.
The story of these poems: Right now, things feel tense in my beloved home city. Temperatures are rising past the point of tolerance for my winter-thick New England blood. Additionally, ICE continues to roam and harass in my neighborhood, which adds its own brand of heat.
JUNE 1995: NO AC, JUST ADVICE Go get a washcloth from the tall, skinny bathroom closet. Look for one that’s not too threadbare. (Dig, if you have to.) Run the tap until it’s icy cold, Then, squish-squish-squish that washcloth in the water Until it’s good and soaked. Wring it out, just enough, so it doesn’t drip. Now, go lay down in bed. Put that cold cloth right across your eyes. Become as still as the night air. Think of winter.
BURLINGTON, 2025 I have become one of the citizens Living a normal life, While just map-inches away, Humans are stored as sinful cattle, Hidden like something stolen on shameful impulse. Fifteen miles from my city, A dull office park crumbles into something repulsive. There is no such thing as proper building code for torture. Cubicle floors are not meant for weeks of sleepless nights. Crackers are not a meal. And the entrance into Burlington— Since we must now call it by the name of its city, Just as Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen— I said the entrance into Burlington Is not always a two-way door. I ask myself what I want to be able to say To the children who are still babies for now, But who will grow up and ask questions like: Did you know? Were you part of the problem? What did you do to help? How did it all get so bad? How did you save them in the end? I don't know about that last question, But as for the rest: I’ll tell them about the LUCE hotline, And the folks warning others on Waze about “icy roads,” And the cards, appearing in the little libraries around my city, the ones explaining your rights if ICE agents show up at your door, And the Reddit thread that spread awareness when squads of abductors were at large in the streets, And how I wrote and wrote and wrote: To my representatives, to Substack, to the whole internet, So that we might not repeat, not forget, So that this time would not disappear into palms greased, So that we might recover from this terrible disease.
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‘Sinful cattle’ - so much in this image, of impending doom and misunderstood innocence.
“I ask myself what I want to be able to say
To the children who are still babies for now,
But who will grow up and ask questions like:
Did you know?
Were you part of the problem?
What did you do to help?
How did it all get so bad?
How did you save them in the end?”
This part. This is the part I’ve been wrestling with recently. Feeling like I’m not doing enough, I can be doing more. This is the part we should be asking ourselves all the time.