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Mark Nowak



All the hats are MAGA hats, that’s MAGA with two As. It’s agitprop, after all. Barricade fences. American Crows. Save America March. Yesterday, Trump tweeted Antifa is a Terrorist Organization, stay out of Washington. Law enforcement is watching you very closely. It’s the 61st time he’s tweeted about antifa, BLM-antifa thugs, ANTIFA SCUM, ANTIFA anarchists, Antifa androgynes, et cetera. But this morning, it’s all camouflage. It’s all MAGA hats. This morning it’s all a sea of whiteness, an absolutely white sea. These people aren’t going to take it any longer. Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” blares from the loudspeakers. American flags fly behind bulletproof glass. All-American, Made in America. ... the China virus … the scam of mail-in ballots … American Barn Owls. American Psycho. Anglo Americans. American Dream. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. A phrase as old as Ronald Reagan. So pure theft in American history. America with two As. Everybody knows it. The smoke is rising already, rising again.








And then late in the evening, or early in the morning, boom, these explosions of bullshit (the crowd chants, Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit! …). Bald eagles won’t soar above these bandstands, these bystanders, these firebrands. Northern barred owls won’t fly above this bacchanal. A national binge, a national bender, a debauched jamboree. Oath Keepers keep broad lists of “Orders We Will Not Obey.” Just ask Joe Biggs. Ask Elmer Stuart Rhodes. Just ask the Proud Boys. Stand back, stand by. Just so many bees, swarming and stinging. Broad-winged hawks. Blockbusters. Borders. Even more barricades. Our country has been under siege for a long time. Long before today. From the beginning, tbh. So let’s be honest. Blatant truths are being butchered. Everywhere America is burning. Black jackets, black boots, black SUVs, black sunglasses, black leather gloves. … a communist country … a bad story … the hoaxes and the lies that we’ve been forced to believe. A barrage of true believers about to be barging in, barreling in. Babies, bitterly born. Believe me.








Carrion birds. Cantankerous crowds. Overcast skies concerned with what’s beneath them. A citadel. A circus. An ocean of flags and camouflage. A white sea. A cold and brackish pond at least. A swamp for sure. But now, the caravans … the caravans are forming again. Build a wall. Construct a new narrative, a more contemporary conclusion. Collision? Collusion? … this enormous crowd … this great country … Khaki and blaze orange the colors of this conflagration. Don’t Tread on Me flags, caustic and coiled. Fire-engine red MAGA caps. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore. Cold cases. Collateral damage. A colossal carnival. The commons vs. the commoners. Clearinghouses, House of Representatives. Distant slaughterhouse workers forced to work through Covid-19. Cajoling cliques. Mobs coalescing. Clementine-colored hair. So we’re going to, we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I love Pennsylvania Avenue. And we’re going to the Capitol … Cooper’s hawk, more crows. Here ye, here ye, the town crier cries out to his acolytes. … to the Capitol … Come one, come all. From the loudspeakers, Elton John’s “Ballerina.” From the loudspeakers, Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.”








Down Madison Avenue, down Constitution Drive, down Independence Ave NW. Domino’s delivery directions or coup d’état. Doesn’t matter. Just don’t doubt the doomsday scenarios. The doublespeak. The Dow Jones Industrial Average. The national debt. Walk by My God! What Is This? historical marker, the spot where Charles Guiteau shot President Garfield. Twice. Garfield died in the oceanside town of Elberon, New Jersey (4 miles north of Asbury Park). But duh, that’s history now. Everything’s a streamed series on the History Channel now. Just walk past Frederick Law Olmstead’s Summerhouse and dream about the daffodils. See the daguerreotypes,the documentaries about our deadlier moments. Jeffrey Dahmer. The Branch Davidians. Covid-19. Death is our most perfected form of democracy. It’s midday now. Drones drone overhead.Walk by Tony Smith’s sculpture, The Snake is Out. Mad hatters in red MAGA hats. Dark serpents, double-dealers, Judas Iscariots right here in the flesh. District of Columbia. The dustheaps of history. Dumpster fires. American junkyards, American graveyards. But I digress.








The Ellipse is empty now. Everybody’s marching to save America. A white man in a red MAGA hat rips away the plastic fencing near the Capitol Reflecting Pool. It’s barely a barricade, tbh. Snow fencing essentially. So excited, so effusive, white flagpole bearers, red MAGA hat wearers. Everyday white Americans marching past the Peace Monument, flying their favorite flags alongside the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial. Entering the alabaster steps of the United States Capitol. Shouting at a few cops in blue or black surgical masks, none in riot gear. Have not seen bald eagles here. Eastern screech owls either. Just this white eclipse. “AREA CLOSED” signs hang on metal fences that don’t seem to matter to the Don’t Tread on Me men. Everywhere there are fires we won’t be able to extinguish. They’re effervescent now, omnipresent now. Effigies singing elegies. And even more flags, even more camouflage. Streams upon streams of peppers pray. Enter the effluvium. Enter at your own risk. There’s no exit here. Just these great white neighbors sailing upon these great white seas. A great white siege. Everybody knows it.










Mark Nowak’s books include Social Poetics (2020), Coal Mountain Elementary (2009), Shut Up Shut Down (2008), Revenants (2000), and …AGAIN (forthcoming), all from Coffee House Press. He recently edited Coronavirus Haiku (Kenning Editions, 2021) and wrote an introduction to Celes Tisdale’s When the Smoke Cleared: Attica Prison Poems and Journal (Duke University Press, 2022). A native of Buffalo, New York, Nowak is founding director of the Worker Writers School.



Founded in 2020, Three Fold is an independent quarterly based in Detroit that presents exploratory points of view on arts, culture, and society in addition to original works in various media, including visual art, literature, film and the performing arts. We solicit and commission contributions from artists, writers, and activists around the world. Three Fold is a publication of Trinosophes Projects, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization located in the historic Eastern Market neighborhood in downtown Detroit. Click here to check out Three Fold’s events page and view a schedule of the publication’s on-site activities.

Three Fold recognizes, supports, and advocates for the sovereignty of Michigan’s twelve federally-recognized Indian nations, for historic Indigenous communities in Michigan, for Indigenous individuals and communities who live here now, and for those who were forcibly removed from their Homelands. We operate on occupied territories called Waawiiyaataanong, named by the Anishinaabeg and including the Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe (Chippewa), Odawa (Ottawa), and Bodewatomi (Potawatomi) peoples. We hold to commit to Indigenous communities in Waawiiyaataanong, their elders, both past and present, and future generations.