Public Speaking After the Governor Declared our Civil Rights Group a Terrorist Organization

In the manmade lake, minnows surround a pinkening tomato,
needling into its soggy flesh ‘til its skin breaks open, becomes frayed
& its particles, formerly bonded by chains, float atop the water,
wading between consumption & assumption as two turtle shells
appear—leaving the tomato guts to bob—fish fleeing their fate as prey.
I send pictures of these long neck turtles to my partner, along with a snake

from Instagram painted by someone on mushrooms. A silly sea snake,
like the sweater on my feed reading, “Make America Italy 4/28/45”. Mussolini’s belly a
tomato-
tinged trace as his shell hanged upside down in Milan that day, arms splayed.
That picture, I didn’t send, not because it’s not funny, but because I am afraid.
I think now before I send. Consider a case vs. me: evidence of Henry Kissingers in hell
& Luigi likes, so many Luigi likes, which maybe wouldn’t sink some in hot water,

but because we’re “terrorists” I worry how words look on a sweater,
dress instead in a print depicting flowers and pink fruit, maybe a snake
shaking his don’t-tread-on-me tail, or NRA-supportin’ shotgun shells
& whatever opinions I’m still allowed to have, to make—know
now why that Egyptian boy from our protest was suddenly stone quiet, afraid
from lessons learned on cinderblock & cold floor, his young life barely pried

free from the clutches of my empire’s tyranny. In whispers, we pray
prostrating ourselves like fruit before the sun, bobbing atop the water
hoping to ascend into the universal soup versus artificial lake-sprayed,
sucked into fights between minnows and some professor, slippery as snake,
who needed a Muslim to speak on a panel, a token for his friends to lob tomato-
weighted accusations against, but but they say death to America (lol). They shilled

fake questions, needling me to disavow governments I don’t know, in defense of tanks shelling
toddlers sleeping in tents, in defense of guarding our words like prey,
while my brain begins to bob on the ripples of their questions like that pink tomato,
skin thinning with every biting word. My answers roll off their fish skin like water.
New goalposts, new demands to distance ‘til this meeting is naked.
I see why they brought us here, whose voices they hoped to’ve frayed.

Instead they’ve got me, some silly little longneck who should be afraid
but’ll shield my friends’ flesh using what words I still have like turtle shells
to protect against their accusations, and slip inside considering the snake
in that Instagram post. How straight the line stretched across its page in praise,
the way the painter probably saw it squiggling through swirling blue water
not needing to make its movements too obvious. To me though,

it first looked cooked like a potato, french-fried. Green stick-up, ray
of light, majestic—is this hell? With eddies swirling in cobalt water,
stunned-silent body of snake. Tongue licked out in defiance—its however-red tomato.