Abracadabra

^{for Erich and Patricia}

List of things to banish
Can include words, people, theoretical apparatuses
Can take the form of a grocery list, a scientific experiment, or a manifesto
Can read like a personal ad of unwanting
Can summon aid to help with banishing
Can be uncertain of what will remain
Can have no positive mission statement
Can be written in a language other than language
Can circulate amongst FRIENDS ONLY
Can evade being imagined, written, embodied, archived
Can go like this
Can make itself irrelevant
Can include buildings, brushstrokes, and other abominations
Can mean my way of life is unlivable
Can mean my life is as yet unlived
Can mean I must become a menace to my enemies
Can undo futurity forever in favor of *******
Can remake futurity into someone who doesn’t recognize herself
Can punctuate the present like a cup of coffee or a Monday
Can be dreamed up and shot down and elongated
Can tell us something
Can include forms and fantasies, even the ones getting us by
Can instigate an interregnum 
Can be unfinished
Can include hope hopefully
Can be blank
But don’t kid yourself
It isn’t
And it can’t include 
History

Copyright © 2023 by Mia Kang. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 8, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets. 

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“I wrote this poem while living in New Haven, Connecticut, surrounded by the disciplinary apparatus of Yale University and frequently attending academic classes and lectures that focused, in one way or another, on creating a better world. The poem comes from a manuscript investigating two terms: solidarity and abolition. It seeks to refuse the logic that requires an expected outcome to justify action, while also trying to capture something of the brutal honesty and commitment required to forge a way forward into changed social relations.”
—Mia Kang