#kyle dargan

just above your birthing grotto. Fill yourself with the song—sing. Do not sink. You must be buoyant. When rescue is slow to arrive

you will need to drop anchor, give the ocean your limbs.

Brother Rickey halts me before I cross East Capitol. He trumpets that we are at war. I want to admit that I don’t believe in “white” —in the manner that Baldwin did not—but Brother Rickey would simply retort that my disbelief is no immunity from the imaginations of those who think themselves “white.” As we await the stoplight’s shift—so I may walk and he may holler “Final Call!” between lanes of idle traffic— I think of race as something akin to climate change, a force we don’t have to believe in for it to kill us. I once believed in the seasons. (I fantasize fall as Brother Rickey’s favorite—when his suits, boxy and plaid, would be neither too hot nor thin.) But we are losing spring and fall—tripping from blaze to frost and back. And what’s to say we won’t soon shed another season, one of these remaining two, and live on either an Earth of molten streets or one of frozen light? That’s when worlds end, no—when, after we’ve eradicated ourselves, we become faint fossils to be exhumed by the curiosities of whichever life-forms follow our reign? I still owe Brother Rickey two dollars for the paper he last placed in my hand, calling me “soldier.” I don’t have to believe that I am enlisted in order to understand he’ll forgive my debt so long as this idea of “whiteness” sorties above us— ultraviolet, obliging an aseasonal, unending deployment. Released by the signal, I advance—my head down, straining to discern the crossfire from the cover.

Daily Conscription by Kyle Dargan

“We can no longer afford that particular romance.” —James Baldwin

 Brother Rickey halts me before I cross East Capitol. He trumpets that we are at war.

I want to admit that I don’t believe in “white” —in the manner that Baldwin did not—but Brother

Rickey would simply retort that my disbelief is no immunity from the imaginations of those

who think themselves “white.” As we await the stoplight’s shift—so I may walk and he may

holler “Final Call!” between lanes of idle traffic— I think of race as something akin to climate change,

a force we don’t have to believe in for it to kill us. I once believed in the seasons. (I fantasize

fall as Brother Rickey’s favorite—when his suits, boxy and plaid, would be neither too hot nor

thin.) But we are losing spring and fall—tripping from blaze to frost and back. And what’s to say

we won’t soon shed another season, one of these remaining two, and live on either an Earth

of molten streets or one of frozen light? That’s when worlds end, no—when, after we’ve eradicated

ourselves, we become faint fossils to be exhumed by the curiosities of whichever life-forms follow

our reign? I still owe Brother Rickey two dollars for the paper he last placed in my hand, calling me

“soldier.” I don’t have to believe that I am enlisted in order to understand he’ll forgive my debt

so long as this idea of “whiteness” sorties above us— ultraviolet, obliging an a seasonal, unending deployment.

Released by the signal, I advance—my head down, straining to discern the crossfire from the cover.