Detour of War

We inhabit a world of buildings deemed official

by officials. Downtown,

rivers swim with colorful trash

around the cool blue Federal Building staid

like a bold, unmeltable cube. In 2004, we stood

nearby on Saturday afternoons, bearing signs

against the wars. Years later, we would spot our protests

in a YouTube video. Our signs reflected black and white

and matched what the sky looks like sometimes, or the lake

reflecting its surroundings. The wars are still wounding.

We still see the same people at rallies. One of our friends

shares a name with a famous poet.

He’s entered the city’s secret system of underground tunnels.

What have you found down there? We asked him.

Guns.

We told him we used to sit near the statue,

named of him but not for him, with other poets’

books. How we were a shivering island

in a lake of cars, willing ourselves

to have come from somewhere

else, longing for a city of honesty.

Someday will be the first day, we say,

when all of this is gone—the statue,

the video, the river, the poets, the book, the guns.

We say someday there will not be war.

Freesia McKee is author of the chapbook How Distant the City (Headmistress Press, 2018). Her words have appeared in cream city review, The Feminist Wire, Painted Bride Quarterly, CALYX, Gertrude, Tinderbox, So to Speak, Nimrod International Journal, Bone Bouquet, Flyway, and the Ms. Magazine Blog. Freesia's poetry is forthcoming in The Hollins Critic, The Antigonish Review, Virga, and The Grabbed Anthology. Her book reviews have appeared in South Florida Poetry Journal, Gulf Stream, and The Drunken Odyssey. Freesia was the winner of CutBank Literary Journal’s 2018 Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry, chosen by Sarah Vap. Find her online at freesiamckee.com or on Twitter at @freesiamckee.