“Psalm for the Slightly Tilted,” by Ilya Kaminsky | The New Yorker

This is not
a good year.
But it has
witnesses.

When you see them protest the powerful,
since who else does,
they stand
like flagpoles outside the courthouse
after a northeaster.

They came with
the wrong shoes
for revolution.
Still,
they showed up.

Comfort, Lord,
their bodies—
each a question mark
doing time
as a coatrack,
hung with borrowed jackets.

They are your legion
of bent spoons.
They are the only ones
who showed up—
with their orthopedic flair.

I saw my people lean—
not toward hope but toward each other.
They chant off-rhythm
and mean it.

These are my kind of people:
no tears—just
steam from a kettle
that never quite boils.

In times like these, don’t forget us:
the lopsided
leaning on one another,
like sodden paperbacks
left out on the stoop—
Nobody opens them.
But they still insist
on carrying the plot.

Comfort us standing up—
half scarecrow
half saxophone
with a squawk.
While stiffness becomes state policy,
comfort us sitting—
in that collapse called calm.

In the year they come for us
watch my people
make protest signs
out of old pizza boxes.
Watch—

there are no boring people
which is unfortunate.
You’d think statistically
we’d get at least a few—
one-speed souls
with just meh stuff to do.

But none of them are dull.
Each—
a suitcase
held together
by duct tape.

These are your coffee-stained saints
who rise not with trumpets
but with Advil.
They stand
and wait
creased like maps
of a country
that doesn’t exist anymore.