This poem and its companion song look at Korematsu v. United States, the 1944 Supreme Court decision that upheld Japanese American internment, and the 2018 opinion that called it gravely wrong the day it was decided. It is part of the Earth's Lost History essay What's Scarier Than Halloween.
The Zombie Files
They declared it dead on a June morning.
Gravely wrong the day it was decided.
The gavel fell. The scholars nodded.
The record closed.
But nobody took the cage apart.
It's still there.
In the basement of the stacks,
behind the drawer marked settled,
under the dust of a hundred apologies.
The pen that wrote it never dried.
It just learned new names.
Every generation thinks it's the first to be free.
Every generation builds a cage it can't see.
The sign on the door is always small.
For your safety. For your safety. For your safety.
That's all.
They'll tell you it was long ago.
Tell you the parties switched.
Tell you the page has turned.
The zombie doesn't care what party holds the pen.
It just waits for the next panic.
The cage was never taken apart.
Never becomes Earth's Lost History.
It always waits.
Read the full article on Substack: What's Scarier Than Halloween