Driving a thousand miles and more
Following the highway south mile after mile
Reading place names on the signs
Seeing so many indigenous words anglicized
Whose land this was for many millennia
Before it was taken piece by piece
Before they were forced to leave
Before those who resisted were killed
So many atrocities left out of the history lessons
And now this interstate runs through it
With no apparent sign of the original inhabitants
Except for the place names on the signs
I grew up near Boston surrounded in history
Going to a drive-in movie in Natick
Swimming in Lake Cochituate
Places named by the indigenous people
But I didn’t question why
All that remained of them were words on signs
As a child taught in school the Thanksgiving myth
As if the colonists had any right to be there
But now I know the name for what was done
The word is genocide
The ongoing legacy of this European settler state
In the process of conquering a continent
And so it is entirely consistent
As the Palestinian genocide continues today
At the hands of a European settler state
That this government is behind it all the way
