Poem: This is Pfizer's America

This is Pfizer's America

Written by Chloé Allyn Illustrated by Victoria Decembert

This is Pfizer’s America

and I lied a little to get my vaccine,

This life — no, reality? Society? World

Asks: can you take care of yourself? Can you

Stop worrying about black (light, dark) brown (red, yellow)

white?!

If anyone at the back of the line wants to

Complain

Remind them Daddy America says

“It’s your fault f*****, it’s the color of your skin

It’s the sin of your bed, the circling bluebirds around

your head, not my clobber, not my police baton

The red color of your blood doesn’t look like

Mine

Your liberal heart beats and mine

Does not, get back in the dirt, go back to the barn.”

So, then we argue, and a mural is done, a Twain book is burned

And another mother loses a son another son is lunch

Truncheons and AI and the dial on the stove is

Stuck, Daddy’s coastlines are receding like high-stakes hair

Pound the Gulf like a storied ass

Listen! inside and outside are riddled with his touch

If I were a plant I’d’ve lost my limbs by now,

Is it my fault that my mind is radioactive when I’ve grown

In bloody soil? I’m not long gone

Or gone gone but

I’ve already Eaten the cancer while watching cartoons

Remember. Daddy hates it when you break

The chain. Daddy hates it when his grandbabies

Come out with a new taste for the truth.