Today, God
By Starr Davis
I am liberated and focused today
on what it means to govern myself.
I am not watching the news
or wearing a bra.
I will not question America
or ask where it was last night.
I went to bed with a cold fact
With no cuddling, after.
Today, God I want nothing
not even the love I have been praying for.
On the train, I won’t offer
anyone my seat.
No one ever moves for me
Some days, not even the wind.
Today, I will be like the flag
that never waves.
At work, I will be black
and I will act like it.
They will mispronounce my name
And this time I won’t answer.
I will sit at my desk with my legs open
and my mind crossed.
This poem was originally published in the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day series on August 31, 2020.
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In Conversation with the Poet
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Starr Davis is a poet and essayist, currently living in Houston, Texas. She is the Creative Nonfiction Editor for TriQuarterly Magazine. Her writing has appeared in publications like Kenyon Review and The Rumpus. Find her on Twitter and Instagram.
Starr is teaching a 2-Week Online Seminar: How to Submit Creative Writing to Literary Magazines. Sunday February 21 & 28, 3:00-5:30pm ET. Register here.
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SF: The opening line really sets the stage for this poem as a prayer, a sloughing off of the world and a burrowing into the self. How does this poem embrace writing as a mechanism to govern the self? Prayer as a mechanism to govern the self?
SD: What a great question. Poetry and prayer are the same things, at least to me they are. Like poetry, there are many forms of prayer. There is a prayer to declare, petition, praise, etc. So, this first line was formulaic—I was trying to awaken my highest self by declaring myself as government. To govern, or rule myself would mean no one else, or no other force could cause oppression. As a Black person, it is almost a science to feel oppressed, no matter where you are, or who you are. I was trying to combat this stronghold with a call to my own throne. If I govern myself today, then the weight of injustice cannot oppress me or dethrone my belief in self.
SF: I love your use of the couplet in this poem. Each set of two seems almost bitten out by the speaker. How did the poem come to this form? Why do you like the couplet?
SD: I love couplets. They feel strong, like braids, like wires. It also felt finite to write the poem in this form. It’s like a two-line story—I played with each couplet and realized I could move any couplet around on the page and the poem would still make sense. I like this idea of each set of two being bitten out. That is kind of what it felt like. It was chunks of my spirit flushed out in verse—I was proud that I never broke form and that it stayed true to itself throughout the poem.
SF: This poem seems to find freedom in absence. “Today, God I want nothing / not even the love I have been praying for.” Negatives accumulate—not watching the news, not questioning America, the flag that never waves—until the poem concludes with outright inversion “my legs open / and my mind crossed.” A killer last line. How do you think about absence, negation and inversion in this poem and in your writing generally?
SD: I think freedom is elusive to someone who doesn’t feel institutionally, free. You know? Poetry is good at holding a writer’s secrets. Langston Hughes’s, I, Too America does that beautifully. He also played with negation—and I think, it evokes the spiritual reality of Black-optimism—maybe one day, the world around me, will accept me. This sneaks into my writing when I least expect it—as all demons do. I also think the poem wanted to be angry, I think it really wanted to be angry at God, but my piety would not allow this to be so. I'm always the hopeful, soul. So, this poem concluded in my sass, but also in my hopefulness.
This conversation happened via email in February 2021.
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