Jamie Hand
If we were to draw a line
(a timeline, we might call it)
from January 6, 2021 to the beginning
how far back would we go?
To the fraudulent claims of fraud
for sure.
But keep going
to “proud boys: stand back and stand by.”
Nevertheless, the line persists.
It points toward Charlottesville
“unite the right” and
“both sides.”
Because on what exactly
were we uniting?
Surely that’s where the line began?
No.
If we’re being honest
(and we should try)
our line points to each claim of
“not my president.”
Denying it didn’t make it go away.
And he was.
Let us pick up our pencil again.
The line must point out “Mexico sends…rapists.”
White virginity has always helped birth
a nation of racists.
Our hands grow tired
our pencils grow dull.
But we must construct a complete line,
and connect the travel ban that both was and wasn’t a ban.
We are picking up speed now,
friends, historians, line drawers.
All the way to the tweeting birthers
who birthed an “alternative” patriotism.
As we feel we approach the beginning of the line, does it end?
(Please, please let it end.)
No, this is where it connects to all the other lines.
Central Park 5
David Duke
Jeff Sessions
Our lines are one and the same.
The problem is
we are just drawing the line now.
Many of us had power and influence all along.
We could have
Drawn
The
Line
The first time it was crossed.
And we didn’t.
We crossed the line together,
over and over
trading white supremacy
for Supreme Court seats.
We frantically erased the line
at each of these moments
and we redrew it
in our own self interest.
(“Just a little further,” we said.
“Unprecedented.”
“Troubling.”
we said.)
And our nation suffered
each time we pushed the line,
trading decency
for a distorted version of democracy.
And, unforgivably,
we ignored the suffering of the least among us.
Poised over partisan paperwork –
protecting our own privileges –
when people asked to see the line, we blew our eraser dust in their faces
and shouted “what about that other line!”
We took the line and pushed it back
even when there was nowhere left to push it.
Our nation is split.
The line divides us.
There is no clean timeline from January 6, 2021
to the beginning of hate.
Only a dirty, complicated one
that we are all complicit in.
Even if we never donned a red hat
or flew a blue flag.
We allowed a Monster
to cross the line on our behalf – over and over.
History
is a sticky web of intersecting timelines.
As we trace them, erase them, misplace them,
we write our stories.
Though we are shattered,
burned,
and splintered,
the present will soon become the past.
The drawers of future timelines are watching us now.
What history will we leave
for them to write?
How will we right our story?