I want to talk about the concentration camp being built in Utah, where I live, that will warehouse people who are unhoused and force treatment on them for real or perceived mental-health issues and substance-use issues. I want to compare it to the Topaz concentration camp that was built here in 1942 and operated until 1945 under Executive Order 9066, whose name I know because I have to know it. To survive. To advocate. To resist. To not repeat the past even as we repeat the past because others don’t know the name Executive Order 9066 or what it did, what it made our country and its people: ugly, cruel, inhumane. Those who don’t (or don’t want to) know about EO 9066 also may not know that another EO made this new concentration camp in Utah possible, the one written July 24, 2025, whose official title I won’t mention because it doesn’t describe what the order does, what it enables. It would be better if it just had a number, not a misleading title. It would be better if it didn’t exist at all.

But I can’t talk about the concentration camp because my language isn’t welcome, especially among those who also have lived experience with mental-health issues. Those I most want to communicate with will attack me for using the diversity model to give context to what I’m conveying. Those of us with lived experience with mental health have different experiences and use varied frameworks for communicating our experiences. We are and should be polyvocal. Yet there’s a growing push for monovocality—for one way of speaking, for one way of perceiving and communicating human experiences. So I’m not talking, not the way I want to be or to the audience I want to talk to. At least I have this loose take on the haibun.

              The age of pastures
              is over. Detention is
              involuntary.

                            Your right to exist
                            on your own terms ends now.
                            You belong on outskirts.

              Get used to the word
              stern. Your life is a concrete
              slab if you’re lucky.

                            Say no and go to jail.
                            What is this if not jail
                            by another name?

              Like a rose. You think
              you’re like a rose when really
              you’re a line item

                            in a multi-million
                            dollar budget. You’re our
                            ticket, our future.

              Containing you is
              business. Here’s a pill.
              We’re sorry it’s come to this.

                            Swallow. Concentrate
                            means gather. We gather you
                            today for Holy

              Capital, for the bottom
              line. You’ve lost your right
              to leave, so don’t try.