Ism Writers

The world is full of ism writers
sobbing, always sobbing
for many distant victims –
but if they found ‘you’ bobbing
in the river, clearly drowning
they’d explain in patient tones
how your privilege, not the current,
is what’s dragging you down.
They’d talk until the bubbles stopped
pen an elegy then
for now that you’re a soggy corpse
it feels safe to call you friend
while sobbing, always sobbing.
That’s what ism writers do.
Every word they write’s correct
but not one word is true.

© Susan Millar DuMars