Dear Captain
By Jennifer Shneiderman
after Walt Whitman
O Captain! my Captain!
our fearful trip has just begun.
Exit the door of no return –
grim vessel of horror,
the treasure chest,
black gold, first wealth and power –
America cannot go back.
But O heart! heart! heart!
the bleeding does not stop.
Black men struck down – life seeping,
fallen cold and dead.
How many ways are there
to sink a heart.
O Captain! my Captain!
rise up and see what has become of us.
The bugle is trilling,
soul of the country.
Bouquets, wreaths fly in the wind
ashes and flames
burned out buildings
broken storefronts
looted dreams.
Here father! dear father!
swaying masses call out for relief
from wretched rudderless elect.
Lips of justice pale –
a standstill, a dead fall.
The anchor sinks,
voyage done, heads bowed.
Exult no shores.
The bells are still
You are betrayed, my captain.
We mourn what could have been,
complicit in silence,
eyes averted.
Time to pay for the passage.
Jennifer Shneiderman is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and a writer living in Los Angeles. She writes poetry and short stories about health and mental health. Her work has been published in Indolent Book’s HIV Here and Now and her short story, “Housekeeping in the Time of COVID-19,” was in the most recent issue of The Rubbertop Review. Her poetry will be included in the anthology, Poetry in the Time of COVID-19, Variant Literature, and the Bright Flash Literary Review. She is the recipient of a Wingless Dreamer flash poetry prize. Currently, her teenage son is in quarantine and her emergency room doctor husband is on the front lines of the pandemic.