Reetika Vazirani (1962–2003) was born in India and graduated from Wellesley College before receiving an MFA from the University of Virginia, where she was a Henry Hoyns Fellow. She is the author of two collections of poetry, White Elephants, winner of the Barnard New Women Poets Prize, and World Hotel, recipient of the 2003 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. While house-sitting in the Chevy Chase home of novelist Howard Norman and his wife, poet Jane Shore, Vazirani took the life of her two-year-old son, and then her own.

It’s a Young Country

by Reetika Vazirani

and we cannot bear to grow old
James Baldwin   Marilyn Monroe
Marvin Gaye sing the anthem
at the next Superbowl
We say America you are
magnificent
     and we meant
we are heartbroken
What fun we chase after it
Can’t hurry go the Supremes
Next that diva soprano
for whom stagehands at the Met
wore the T-shirt I Survived the Battle

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