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If You Leave Your Shoes

By Joseph Ross

A response to Arizona’s law SB 1070


If you leave your shoes
on the front porch
when you run

to the city pool
for swimming lessons,
you might end up

walking across the sand
of the desert in
scorched feet,

bare, like the prophets,
who knew what it was
to burn.

If you leave your lover
to run to the market
for bread and pears

you might return
to find your lover
gone and the bed

covered with knives,
hot and gleaming from
a morning in the sun.

If you leave your country
in the wrong hands,
you might return to

see it drowning in blood,
able to spit
but not to speak.

Added: Monday, June 30, 2014  /  Used with permission.
Joseph Ross
Photo by Ted Schroll.

Joseph Ross is the author of three books of poetry: Ache (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017), Gospel of Dust (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2013) and Meeting Bone Man (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2012). His poems appear in many publications including, The Los Angeles Times, Poet Lore, Xavier Review, The Southern Quarterly and Drumvoices Revue. He has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations and won the 2012 Pratt Library / Little Patuxent Review Poetry Prize. In 2014-15, he served as the 23rd Poet-in-Residence for the Howard County Poetry and Literature Society in Howard County, Maryland. His poem, “If Mamie Till Was the Mother of God” won the 2012 Pratt Library/Little Patuxent Review Poetry Prize. He teaches English and Creative Writing at Gonzaga College High School in Washington, D.C. and writes regularly at his website.

Other poems by this author