THE WHITMAN ISSUE

Sarah Browning

PRAYER OF THE ASHAMED AMERICAN

When there is no good in us
Summon Henry David Thoreau, Rachel Corrie
Summon Emma Goldman, Philip Berrigan
Summon Walt Whitman, Cesar Chavez
Summon James Baldwin
Summon Susan B. Anthony, Harriet Tubman
Summon Harriet Tubman
Summon Mother Jones, Medgar Evers

Be with us now
Be America
Be with us in our marching
Be in our bodies that lie in streets
Be in our nightmares as we try to sleep
Do not leave us
Whisper, hector, shout
through our bullhorns
through our throats

Shout
We are America
We are Elizabeth Cady Stanton
June Jordan
We are Muriel Rukeyser
We are the miners shot at Homestead
We are Sacco and Vanzetti
We are Langston Hughes
Essex Hemphill
Paul Monette, Audre Lorde
We are hope, we are nothing but hope
We are the ancestors to come
We fling ourselves into the future

Come, say it with me:
We are Sojourner
We are Truth

Sarah Browning co-edited DC Poets Against theWar: An Anthology (Argonne House Press, 2004) and has had recent poems published in The New York Quarterly, The Literary Review, and Eclipse. Her collection of poems was a finalist for the New Issues Poetry Prize and she is a recipient of the Quadrangle Poetry Award. She was founding director of Amherst Writers & Artists Institute, an organization providing creative writing workshops to low-income women and youth, and now works raising money for women playwrights and filmmakers at The Fund for Women Artists.

Published in Vol. 6, No. 1, Winter 2004

To read more by this author:
Sarah Browning
Sarah Browning's Intro to The Wartime Issue: Vol. 7, No. 2, Spring 2006
Sarah Browning: DC Places Issue
Sarah Browning: Split This Rock Issue
Sarah Browning: Museum Issue
Sarah Browning: Tenth Anniversary Issue
Sarah Browning on DC Poets Against the War: Literary Organizations Issue
Sarah Browning: Langston Hughes Tribute Issue
Sarah Browning: Floricanto Issue