{"id":170011,"date":"2020-10-19T12:00:45","date_gmt":"2020-10-19T11:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=170011"},"modified":"2020-10-11T06:12:45","modified_gmt":"2020-10-11T05:12:45","slug":"california","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/10\/california\/","title":{"rendered":"California"},"content":{"rendered":"

5 Oct 2020 – \u201cIn the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, I\u2019ve been thinking about how poetry can sustain us, much as it did during the height of the AIDS crisis\u2014another pandemic that still rages in many parts of the world, and particularly in marginalized communities everywhere. We need poetry now as we did then to make sense of our experience of suffering, to name and to humanize the victims of these twin killers even as some seek to blame or stigmatize or erase them. I wrote this poem to come to terms with some of my own conflicted feelings of shame, complicity, and privilege as I care for people with COVID-19 among my many other patients who continue to live with HIV, and to remember those who did not survive, recognizing my paradoxical power and helplessness as I witness the disproportionate burden of these diseases on people of color.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

******<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I used to dream of living here. I hike
\na trail I know that at the end opens<\/p>\n

to glorious views of the city I did
\nlive in once, when men my age kept dying<\/p>\n

while I learned how to diagnose AIDS.
\nSome dreams don\u2019t come true, and some dreams become<\/p>\n

nightmares. Across a field that smells of sage,
\na few horses loiter. I want to think<\/p>\n

that they forgive me, since they\u2019re noble creatures.
\nThey stamp and snort, reminding me they know<\/p>\n

nothing of forgiveness. I used to dream
\nthat someday I\u2019d escape to San Francisco,<\/p>\n

when I was still in high school and I knew.
\nTall and muscled, the horses are like the jocks<\/p>\n

on the football team who beat me once, as if pain
\nteaches truth and they knew I had to learn.<\/p>\n

I used to dream I was as white as them,
\nthat I could slam my locker closed and not<\/p>\n

think of jail. Some nightmares come true,
\nlike when my uncle got arrested for<\/p>\n

cocaine. My family never talked about it,
\nwhich made me realize they could also feel shame.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when I started dreaming I could be
\na doctor someday, that I could get away,<\/p>\n

prescribe myself a new life. Right now, as
\nthe city comes into view, I think of those<\/p>\n

animals and hope they got what they deserved.
\nThe city stretches out its arms, its two bridges<\/p>\n

to Oakland, to Stockton, to San Rafael,
\nto Vallejo; places I could have been from<\/p>\n

but wasn\u2019t. It looks just as it did
\nall those years ago. Yet I know it\u2019s changed<\/p>\n

because so many of us died, like Rico,
\nwho took me up here for the first time.<\/p>\n

We kicked a soccer ball around and smoked
\na joint. I think we talked about our dreams,<\/p>\n

but who can remember dreams. I look out
\nand the sun like your hand on my face<\/p>\n

is warm, and for a moment I think this is
\nglorious, this is what forgiveness feels like.<\/p>\n

________________________________________________<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2020 by Rafael Campo. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 5, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Rafael Campo<\/a>\u2019s most recent book is <\/em>Comfort Measures Only: New and Selected Poems 1994-2016 <\/em>(Duke University Press, 2018).\u00a0 The Poetry Section Editor for <\/em>JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, he also practices and teaches general internal medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. He can be found at http:\/\/www.rafaelcampo.com.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 poets.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wrote this poem to come to terms with some of my own conflicted feelings of shame, complicity, and privilege as I care for people with COVID-19 among my many other patients who continue to live with HIV, and to remember those who did not survive, recognizing my paradoxical power and helplessness as I witness the disproportionate burden of these diseases on people of color.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":108039,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[1829,1868,1864,868],"class_list":["post-170011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry-format","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-pandemic","tag-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}