Review: John Mulrooney’s If You See Something Say Something
If You See Something Say Something
John Mulrooney
Anchorite Press, 2005
The title of Mulrooney’s chapbook and long poem, If You See Something Say Something, is a phrase recognizable to mass transit riders in this era of the United States’ war on terror. The phrase adorns posters in subway systems from Washington DC to Boston to New York City. Here Mulrooney appropriates this rather mundane phrase/public service announcement and turns it into something new—refreshing the phrase each time it is repeated, reclaiming faceless government-speak for the voice of the people, an individual, and reshaping the intention of reporting suspicious packages and/or activities into experiencing the world, opening ones eyes, and saying something.
The poem juxtaposes political commentary with personal experience: “We were mislead, given bad intelligence. / Take my hand.” The speaker relates experiences from Antocha Station to Cambridge, Boston, New York City, and Paris. Surrounded by fear and war, the speaker finds life and “the organ of a city pumping its music,” as he seeks out confirmation of his own soul. Though early in the poem, the speaker claims “Isis knows words fail me,” the speaker is articulate and cuts to the point:
Security is not wearing a uniform.
Civility needs a new coat.
Democracy is naked and freezing.
Judgment towel whipped hope in the shower room.
Reason duct taped logic’s butt cheeks together,
following the heart was always a dumb idea.
But by the end of the poem, the speaker claims voicelessness again: “spread too thin by empire to have our own language anymore.” The poem is evocative of the sense of voicelessness one experiences when he/she is at odds with his/her government, the futility of having free speech confined to a “free speech zone” as was the case at the Democratic National Convention in Boston in 2004. Though he claims the contrary, words do not fail Mulrooney. He bears witness to this present era by answering the request If you see something, say something.
Gina Myers
