The Statue of Liberty’s arm is tired.
She may have torn her rotator cuff.
She still has dual citizenship,
wonders if her passport is in order.
She imagines lowering her arm,
dousing the torch in the harbor,
boiling the sea and seething Ellis Island.
Friends, look at the person next to you.
Put your arm around their shoulder.
Help them keep that torch in the air.
Tell them you would never turn them in.
We’re the resistance now.
–
Jan Steckel is a poet and former pediatrician. Her book The Horizontal Poet (Zeitgeist Press, 2011) won a 2012 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Nonfiction. She has published two award-winning chapbooks: Mixing Tracks (Gertrude Press, 2009) and The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist Press, 2006). Her writing has appeared in Scholastic Magazine, Yale Medicine, Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Oakland, California, “where we keep our fist in the air.”
