Leona Gom
November
it starts when you do it again after they
said no, it starts when you say We and
know who you mean, and each day you
mean one more.
–Marge Piercy
it has always happened somewhere else,
somewhere in history before
they knew better, or somewhere south
where politics means guns
and electrodes on the skull.
if it got closer we just
moved away, there was
always another country, another
province. this time
there is no leaving it
to someone else, someone who is
a better revolutionary.
we have lived too long
to pretend we are still
tourists taking
notes for a book,
with somewhere safe to go home to.
this time it is ourselves
on the picket lines,
we are cold and frightened and
tired, and changed in a way
we will never forgive.
Leona Gom, The Collected Poems, Sono Nis Press, 1991.