John Maher: #NotTrump Series
Home
Go on
let the white man plan your house
let him choose the nails and lumber
pick the site and draw the blueprint
let him tell you how to build it
address how to lay the concrete
show you how to hold the hammer
point at where to place the fittings
sound off on the beams and rafters
when you cut your thumb while sawing
he will say to stop your bleeding
when you ask for break or bandage
he will dock you of your dollars
when you wrench your back while lifting
he will ask, What disability?
as you sand the framings down
he will laugh at all the splinters
as you clad the walls with siding
he will call your work lopsided
say you do not understand
what it is that you are doing
where it is you will be living
that you cannot build without him
that you’re nothing but your labor
don’t know how to be a neighbor
as you clamber up the rooftop
placing shingles down precisely
he will wheel away the ladder
leave you waiting in the weather
come back bearing in his pickup
bed and couch, console and TV
have his friends carry them in
so he will not have to pay you
as you cry out for his help
he will tell you that the problem
lies not with his home you built
but with those who wish to own it
having not put in the work
slam the door, and then the silence
left between the world you merit
and the one you’re left to live in
grows as wild as storms that batter
at his roof—your home, your sentence
John Maher is an award-winning journalist and poet living in Brooklyn, NY. He is an assistant news editor at Publishers Weekly, and co-editor of The Dot and Line. He has written for publications including Electric Literature, Kirkus Reviews, and The Long Island Herald, and placed work in Esquire, Hyperallergic, Entropy, The Adirondack Review, Magnapoets, The Miscreant, and Yes, Poetry, among others. His poems have been acclaimed by Mark Wunderlich as “sharp, short, and striking, notable for their control and their certainty. I admire the endings of the poems in particular, with their modest flourishes, their brandished daggers."
