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Brynn Saito
or Listening to the Presidential Debate While Stuck in Traffic

1.

Roads clog with people in vehicles crossing the Golden Gate
Give my rage back to me, I know how to hold it
Ghost fog grows and stretches itself through the bars and I’m ready for it
On my radio, the white general and the white general
yank each other into the deep end, good heavens
Don’t teach me to hate my language tonight
Don’t teach me how to hate my lips and their language tonight
Tongo says capitalism walks on water, I’ve seen my TV, I believe it
All of the redwoods in the world can’t keep this country from wanting to die
The future has arrived and it’s doubled over
and the best of us are ready for love though we’re burning

2.

Roads clog with people in vehicles crossing the Golden Gate
My family is Eduardo and Mitsuo and Marilyn and Alma
and Samuel and Fumio and the twin who drank himself to death
and the auntie who drank herself to death
and the Issei and the Nisei and the Sansei with their rock faces and nightmares
Undisguise me, said the stone
Undisguise me, said the stone to the desert light
Undisguise me, said the stone to the river
Lay me down under harsh water flowing under midnight starlight
Take my face off of my face, said the stone, shake me open

3.

Roads clog with people in vehicles crossing the Golden Gate
The white general and the white general
teach me how to hate my language on the radio tonight
Which nightmare of a framework makes the human count
Which bodies count and which count against
Grandma met Grandpa in those camps
Let me give your rage back to you, said the poem
Stop trying so damn hard, said the poem
Everything that has ever happened to you and your family
keeps happening and the love keeps coming in with its surgery
Get good with yourself, said the poem, get gone
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This poem arrived as I was stuck in traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge. It was the eve of the 2016 election. I'd just heard Tongo Eisen-Martin read. I was rereading Walter Benjamin and thinking about the transformative forces of history, their repetitions and wreckage. "Those camps" refers to the prisons that indefinitely detained the Japanese American community during WWII. The poem arrived line-by-line; I did my best to memorize it as it was composing itself (couldn’t write anything down). This is a good way to pass the time when stuck in traffic.
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