“I really couldn’t, couldn’t eat a mouse pie. And I shall have to eat it, because it is a party.”
— Beatrix Potter

This country couldn’t, really couldn’t, spell freedom

with a q, yet here we go again. Quietly quaking. Killing

loudly. Spelling birthright like never here. This country

couldn’t, really couldn’t split the pie into unpieful slices:

give everyone an extra scoop of ice cream, keep cutting

til the berries gush. The berries couldn’t be more beautiful,

more plentiful, more picked by immigrants paid to never tell

their real brambled stories in a language where truth thrums

mouthy and luscious as a pie buffet. A pie parade. This country

couldn’t throw one, couldn’t give itself crustless. Couldn’t love

the hedonistic pie plate, the pucker where the crimping gaps

slutty and slovenly as a book in clear, ripped library plastic—

anyone can touch it—anyone can judge what the words mean.

Freedom’s just another word for; freedom spelled with a silent free.

This country couldn’t spell worth a damn from the start. Kept

abbreviating woman as man, kept abbreviating pie as I, kept creating

pies out of appleappleappleappleappleappleapple ladening the tree

like hard red clouds, like a pie storm (all worm and snake and

fairytale chomping on its own dark tail, instead of something more

like manna, like enough, like knives were made for licking off

the juice and letting it dangerously dribble, then licking off a lover’s

mouth until who knows what the fruit is, and who cares). This country

couldn’t not care or couldn’t care or couldn’t tell the difference—

couldn’t clean the plate or let its hate turn soft as butter between

human fingers’ rub, or it could, but who would walk with the blue-

ribbon prize, the mousetrap of the wallet stuffed? This country

could sing a different song than blackbirds, sixpence, pie plates,

crumbs and ovens. Could bake itself silly and satiated, generous

as filling spilling down the oven rack. Could bubble and drip

and let living mice riffle whiskers in the sweet, sticky sludge.

Could bake flour-butter-salt-sugar-water to a more perfect

union til everyone lifts pieces out with only fingers, then licks

those fingers like a dog licks where a rabbit’s been after it’s wriggled

through a fence that’s lattice like a crust for the pie of yard—because

who says there’s only this pie or that pie, or pie on the moon; there’s

starry-earthy pie for all and whiskey shots scorchy enough to keep

the sugar honest. And freedom is spelled (could be, could be):

here’s to handed-down recipes with handwritten notes that improve them:

it’s mousse pie, not mouse pie; add more cream to the filling; add

more filling to the cream, run your tongue down the beaters; let yourself

love what MLK called “this garment of destiny.” He meant,

whatever hurts one, hurts everyone. He meant, we’re all in the pie.