Like a Prisoner of Soft Words: Poetry: The New Yorker

The confusion of love and politics reaches a quietly intense breaking in Wright's poem. We journey emptily to our "joys" (restaurant) and to our fears ("border"). We're almost like those trying to cross the border, thinking there is a better life here, those who journey authentically. But we can't tell who is who - not even those that might be on "our" side ("Minutemen") perhaps because we don't care.

We don't care about the public things because we can't afford to care about the private things: to look like we care for the "lonely outline of the host" would interrupt what we think is freedom, his and ours.