Free Woman, by Ingrid Bruck

After Langston Hughes

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Let America be America again,

Where sheiks turn the firehouse into a temple

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Where wearing a turban won’t get you shot

And a man slapped to the floor doesn’t get his ribs kicked

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Let America be America again, 

A science museum turned into a classroom where Chinese artisans craft

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Where visiting the zoo isn’t for the bear eating the preacher

And that preacher ain’t no geek in the corner wearing a dunce cap

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Let America be America again,

Where children sleek as rabbits climb the jungle gym

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Hang upside down on monkey bars,

Walk balanced on top of a fence rail

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Slight and slim, they run its length unafraid of falling 

As I once did on a fallen oak over a stream

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Let America be America again,

Where a girl jeered by boys as a slut

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Claims her place in the world as a woman,

Owns her own body and sex

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Goes alone in the woods to pick mayflowers,

spring gems hidden in seams of brown leaves

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Picks silver words in sunlight from wild white pigeons,

And after a firefly flashes, uncovers the tremble of dark

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Ingrid Bruck lives in Amish country in Pennsylvania, a landscape that inhabits her poetry, she protests all abuse of women. Her poetry appears at www.ingridbruck.com