Meridith Allison

The long and short of it is,
I’d rather not be listening to a podcast
about how democracies die
as I pull weeds on a Saturday morning
while the American flag on my neighbor’s porch
flaps loudly in the wind.
 
But this much I know: summer remembers both the gardener
and the absence of one.
 
The long and short of it is,
I have two sons, not yet caught up in the life ahead of them,
their days filled with Minecraft and marble runs,
chess openings and lightsaber duels.
 
But of this I’m sure: the empire of childhood, like all empires,
falls slowly at first, and then all at once.
 
And so I teach my gentle boys
of Napoleon III and the Reichstag fire,

Kent State, Selma, Tiananmen Square,

the rise of Mussolini and the fall of Rome.

We learn Habeas corpus, coup d’état, la migra! la migra!, et tu, Brute?
 
And I ask them to notice
the bowl in the sink before the oatmeal hardens,
the sock on the floor, passed over for days,
the sirens, the scared, the hungry, the helpers.
Where do the lizards get their water?
 
The long and short of it is,
I’m still trying to figure this out for myself.
Do we fight fire with fire?
Look for the cracks, push where it leans?
Do we run, do we wait, do we garden, can we grieve?
 
I think:
you can only fight a tyrant where your feet touch the ground.
 
I think:
the roots that we tend will return in the spring.

Meridith Allison lives on the edge of the Gila Wilderness in southwestern New Mexico with her family. She writes often, finishes pieces occasionally, and shares her work rarely-usually only when her brother, who happens to be the editor of this project, insists. She’s very fond of walking and of her little dog, Boo.

This poem appeared in Record of Dissent: Poems of Protest in an Authoritarian Age — Summer 2025, published by The Chaos Section Poetry Project. We’ll be featuring each poem from the collection individually in the weeks ahead. You can read the full collection or download a free PDF of the chapbook here.