This is Not First Grade

When I was my dad’s magic helper, disappear 
was only a verb: He’d make a penny 
disappear—
 

I’d run to hide one with the matching date 
in a box for cousins to find.
 

The word can now be noun or verb, even transitive: 
Her pregnant daughter was among the disappeared, or, 
The state disappeared forty-three students in Iguala.
 

In autograph books and on backs of school photos 
we wrote, Never change. Stay just the way you are.
 

What would I write now, when democracy’s lifethread 
seems to hang on the kindness of war criminals? 
Today is not yesterday. Read between the lies.
 

Use your wide-angle lens, focus on movement 
at the frame’s edge, see what appears.