If They Should Come for Us

“If They Should Come for Us,” first published in Poetry Magazine in 2017, is written in free verse in one continuous stanza, without punctuation nor capitalization. The title suggests a possible threat, setting up a conflict of “They” and “Us.” In the first line, the speaker asserts a claim: “these are my people & I find / them on the street” (Lines 1-2), the “street” (Line 2) being a public rather than an intimate or specific space. The speaker, however, does not overtly announce her own presence to her people, but instead chooses to “shadow” (Line 2) them “through any wild all wild” (Line 3). They are “a dance of strangers in my blood” (Line 5). The two different settings in which the speaker encounters her people, an urban road and the “wild” (Line 3), indicate that the speaker finds her people everywhere.

The poem progresses into an observed gallery of distinct individuals, beginning with a female elder, her “sari dissolving to wind / bindi a new moon on her forehead” (Lines 6-7). The clothing and mark are typical dress for many women of the Indian subcontinent, and may include Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains.