Poem: January 6
Crowd of Trump supporters marching on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.)
When Donald Trump pardoned us, I rejected the pardon. Accepting that pardon would be lying about what happened on January the sixth. I am guilty, and I own that guilt….”
—Pamela Hemphill, “MAGA granny,” who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6. 2021Can you still see them climbing through the busted windows? Stalking prey on a Pence hunt through Capitol corridors, leaving their patriotic feces behind? Can you hear the cop—dragged, beaten, tased—telling the mob he has kids while one vandal says shoot him with his own gun? Do you close your eyes to the sight that can never be brainwashed of the bearded American clad in a Camp Auschwitz sweatshirt? Do you still sit by the TV for hours, frozen by the sight of this sea of human screeds refusing to let America be America, fed lie upon lie to make them defy? Do you wonder when the cavalry will come in their camouflage? This is the Capitol, for God’s sake! Do you recall the congressmen FaceTiming from their safe places, crouching in the House gallery, one with a pen at the ready like a makeshift bayonet? Do you hear wives and kids crying? Do you feel democracy dying? Do you sense the citizens trying to make sense of the melee they see here—here—in the land of the free? Day turns to night 365 times a year, but January 6 never leaves.