Portside

Sonnet for Desiree Fairooz Prosecuted for Laughing at Jeff Sessions’ Confirmation Hearing

By Shane McCrae

“Jeff Sessions’ extensive record of treating all Americans equally under the law is clear and well-documented.”

                                                                                                                        —Senator Richard Shelby

America I’m laughing can you hear me

I’m laughing when I heard you say you     weren’t

Racist because you shared a hotel room

On more than one occasion with a black

Lawyer I’m laughing while you worked to keep him

From voting     can you hear me when I heard

You say you liked the KKK     until

You learned the Knights smoke pot I’m laughing

America when I heard you say it was good

News for the South you are America

Good news for the South I’m laughing when I heard

You say that     after the Supreme Court broke

The Voting Rights Act please     tell it again

America     tell me the one I’m living

Shane McCrae is the author of seven books of poetry: Sometimes I Never Suffered, to be published in spring, 2020, by Farrar, Straus and Giroux; The Gilded Auction Block; In the Language of My Captor, which won the 2018 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Poetry, and was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the William Carlos Williams Award; The Animal Too Big to Kill, winner of the 2014 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award; Forgiveness Forgiveness; Blood; and Mule. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writer’s Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He teaches at Columbia University and lives in New York City.