A poem called "Against hate" might be expected to raise its voice and denounce. Dave Bonta's does something quieter and more unsettling. It treats hate as a kind of industry, then asks where the speaker stands in relation to it. In six short lines it sketches how hate gets made, and then admits that the speaker's own defence against it is less heroic than we might hope.
The first sentence runs across a stanza break: hate "makes a great deal / of hot work / by men's not crying / angry at being nobody." The grammar wobbles, and the lack of punctuation means it never settles. Does hate do its work by means of men who don't cry? Are the men angry, or is the crying angry? Is the anger at being nobody the reason for the withheld tears, or what is left over once they are withheld? The most persuasive reading, I think, is that hate is fuel made from swallowed grief. People who refuse to weep and feel erased turn that pressure into heat. The poem never says so outright. It lets the two ideas sit side by side and trusts us to connect them. The possessive "men's" is specific too, pointing to a particular habit of emotional restraint rather than to humanity in general.
"Hot work" is the most interesting phrase in the poem. It sounds like labour, with forges and sweat. In workplace safety language it also names jobs involving sparks and open flame, such as welding. I can't claim Bonta had that in mind, but the resonance fits, since hate here is something produced under heat and with real danger. The word "deal" in "a great deal" is also a pun. It means a large amount, but it is also a transaction, and that commercial note returns in the last stanza with "bargain." Hate strikes a deal, and so does the speaker. The poem sets two kinds of trade against each other.
The speaker appears only at the end, in the word "my." "My mind is in a safe" suggests protection, as a vault protects valuables. A safe is also a locked box that nobody can get into, and that includes its owner. The mind is secure, but it may also be shut away. What keeps it there is "some bargain with doubt." The vague "some" is nearly a shrug, as if the speaker doesn't fully remember how the arrangement was made. Judging by the poem's logic, doubt matters because hate depends on certainty, on knowing exactly who is to blame for being nobody. To bargain with doubt is to give up that certainty. It is a real defence, but a compromise, not a triumphant virtue.
The form supports this reading. There are three unrhymed two-line stanzas, all in lowercase, with no capitals or full stops, so the poem seems to leak from one line to the next. The lines are short, running from three to seven syllables, and they are loaded with stressed monosyllables: "hate," "hot," "mind," "safe," "doubt." The breathy h of "hate" and "hot" gives a sense of heat. The blunt b sounds of "by," "being," "nobody" and "bargain" thud through the second half. "By" begins a line in both the second and third stanzas, which sets two causes side by side. Hate works by men's not crying, and the mind is safe by a bargain. The parallel hints that these are two ways of managing feeling, one by hardening it into rage and the other by locking it away.
Set beside Emily Dickinson's "I'm Nobody! Who are you?", where being nobody is a private pleasure, Bonta's lines show the reverse. His nobodies cannot bear it, and their anger has to go somewhere.
The poem is significant for what it declines to do. It doesn't preach or promise that goodness wins. Its argument against hate is diagnostic: hate is made from unshed tears and a sense of erasure, and the speaker's resistance rests on an uneasy, unexplained deal with uncertainty. The poem ends on the word "doubt," with no full stop, so the question stays open.