‘Ever’ by Patricia Jacaban Miranda

I’m writing this review a day after the mass shootings in Las Vegas, Nevada. I haven’t imbibed on news, so while I may know nothing of the specifics I am gut-wrenchingly familiar with the rhetoric and online discourse. I feel enraged, and like times before, the comfort I seek is found in the written word; Patricia Jacaban Miranda’s ‘Ever’ is a poem I want to print graffiti-sized and shellac it on the square, grey, faceless buildings of every downtown. I want to grab people by the lapels and collars, pull them close and speak it right into their ears. Jacaban Miranda isn’t speaking specifically of the domestic terrorism of Las Vegas, she’s speaking of some of the things that make a tragedy like Las Vegas possible. Poetry—this poem—isn’t a panacea to racist, misogynistic, and violent problems of the United States, but it is the color of our banner. A flag we can hoist, for it to be known, when it comes to dismantling structures of power and politics, we aren’t sleeping, not now, not ever.

apt