Robert Steele
9 poems
07/04/2025 00:00h
Reconstruction almost worked
twelve years
and then it didn't
and we've been living in that failure
ever since
the history they don't teach you
is usually the important part
03/22/2025 00:00h
The library of congress holds
every book published in america
since 1870
every thought anyone thought worth printing
walking through it
i felt small
in the right way
11/01/2024 00:00h
I went to the national archives once
they let me hold a letter
from 1789
just paper
just words
but i thought about whose hands
it passed through
to get to mine
08/04/2024 00:00h
The amendment process is slow on purpose
they knew we'd want to change things fast
they made us wait
sometimes the waiting is wisdom
sometimes it's just waiting
05/16/2024 00:00h
Veterans day and most people
have the day off and don't think about it
which is fine
which is also sad
my grandfather would not have minded
he was quiet about it too
02/08/2024 00:00h
History remembers the leaders
not the ones who carried the water
or wrote the letters
or stayed at home and kept things running
history is always a narrowing
of what actually happened
11/20/2023 00:00h
democracy is a conversation
across time
the founders talking to us
us talking back
it's messy
it's supposed to be
09/05/2023 00:00h
i stood at gettysburg in november
the field was empty and cold
fifty thousand casualties
in three days
the silence was the loudest thing
i've ever heard
06/27/2023 00:00h
i've read the constitution more times
than is normal for a person
it's shorter than you think
and older than anything else we share
we argue about it
which means it's still working
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