Watched From Above
“Avoid movement on roofs, between buildings, and near windows. / Do not stand where you will stand out.” In Carolyn Forché’s poem “On Being Watched From Above,” published in the New Yorker and forthcoming in the anthology I Witness: An Anthology of Documentary Poetry (Wesleyan University Press, 2026) edited by Kwoya Fagin Maples and Erin Murphy, she draws from official Territorial Defense text to write a documentary poem that, void of specific names and places, reflects the horrors of contemporary warfare and surveillance technology. Taking a cue from the imperative and direct language in Forché’s poem, write your own poem that expresses sentiments around society’s increasing use of surveillance and monitoring. In an era in which these modes are oftentimes presented as serving a greater good, what might be overlooked about the costs to our ways of life?
