Letter of Support for U. S. Citizenship
To Whoever is Concerned:
I’ve known them for years,
they laugh a lot, have learned
each other’s language.
I’m already bad at this—
I’ve never done it before.
I’m told to include a paragraph
imagining a future
in which he is deported.
Who am I to say what happens
when the state separates
people who love each other
to different continents?
Plato, the old fool,
said love is the pursuit
of wholeness.
(Rain smashes against my window,
the body of a confused bird.
Look, rain. Look, bird.
I have nothing for you. No answers.)
This is what would happen
if he were deported:
she would break—
not a neat and tidy half
like a sunned apricot.
The word I want is sundered.
The wind is particularly cruel.
I think the rain will never stop,
and when the waters rise high enough,
we’ll all float away,
this letter our paper boat.
M Jaime Zuckerman is the author of two chapbooks, most recently Letters to Melville (Ghost Proposal), as well as recent poems in BOAAT, Diode, Fairy Tale Review, Glass Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Thrush, and other journals. She serves as the associate editor for Sixth Finch and a senior reader for Ploughshares. She grew up in the woods but now lives and teaches in Boston.
Cherry Tree appears under the imprint of the Literary House Press, the publishing arm of the Rose O’Neill Literary House, a cultural center with an almost 50-year-history of promoting the arts. Washington College undergraduates participate in all facets of the production of this print journal, though professional writers serve as genre editors and fill most senior reader positions. Although the journal is still growing, Cherry Tree has already received national recognition. Poems from three of its six issues have been selected for inclusion in The Best American Poetry (2016, 2017, and 2020). Poems have been reprinted on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily and have appeared in the Orison Anthology. Prose has been listed as “notable” in Best American Essays and appeared in Best Microfictions (2020).
Darrell Parsons says
Thank you for this poem.