we're on the moon

Last April, there was an article in The New York Times (admittedly a publication that is Dead To Me, except for the Recipes section) about protest poetry in the United States, especially in the wake of the 2016 election. I feel very strongly about poetry as a means of resistance, now and always; one of the things I really like about this poem in particular, though, is how raw and immediate it feels—both because it's about the election, and because it isn't about the election. Anyway, poetry is kind of magic. Let's win the Midterms.

I'm looking at the moon tonight,
the closest it's been to Earth since 1948
and feel relieved we can do little to ruin it.
That can't be true, you say, and for a moment
even the moon's loneliness escapes isolation
and depends on something else. It's attached.
Like us and what we abandon. Us
and the evil we refuse. The same evil
we share history with, the thin membrane
between you or me and the worst of life.
It's already past midnight and another election
is over in the United States of America.
The oceans will not continue into infinity.
Nor will our money. Nor will this suffering.
We have voted and proven again
we do not know one another. I am trying
so hard to understand this country
, I tell youeven as I'm about to fail loving you (I know this)
in the way people need to be loved
which is without deception, which is almost
impossible. Don't you love it though, you say,
and I remember the first time I saw you in a room
without anyone else. Don't you love the moon?
And because it's easy to say it, I do, I make sure
to tell you I do. Despite the news I knew years ago:
no one saves anyone. We’re on the moon.

—Alex Dimitrov (b. 1984), "The Moon After Election Day" from Resistance, Rebellion, Life (Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 2017), and in this case from The New York Times, "Poems of Resistance: A Primer," April 21, 2017.