1 poem

JANUARY 2026

I wanted to call in sick of America today.

Instead I drove to campus,

Talked with students of Frederick Douglass

And how the moral suasionists would have waved the bloody shirt,

Counted the lash scars and bullet holes,

Reviewed the cel phone video from every angle

Forever and ever

While generations died in chains.

James Baldwin asked in 1984,

How much time do you want for your progress?

That had already taken his father’s time,

His mother’s time, his uncle’s time and his brothers’ time.

Frederick Douglass knew the uses and the limits of pathos and ethos,

Knew when it was time for politics,

And when to send in John Brown.

Carolyn Dekker is the author of North Country: A Pedagogical Almanac (Black Lawrence Press, 2023). She lives in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Since the demise of Finlandia University, she has been teaching at Michigan Technological University and leaning into her role as a local eccentric.