Tag: Amy Coney Barrett

26 Oct. 2020: A rap on Barrett’s confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court

By Kathleen Minor

The dude who refused to denounce white supremacy,
tried to nuke a hurricane and our democracy,
puts kids in cages and promotes segregation.
That dude? Rewrote the Declaration.
We hold these truths to be self-evident:
If you ain’t white, you must be irrelevant.

Listen.
There seems to be some confusion.
We’ve been called violent and angry and useless
and brainwashed, educated and clueless.
With RBG gone, we are Ruthless.

They want us defeated and silenced.
But we built this country to protest a tyrant.
We waged war, and wrote a Constitution
in order to form a more perfect union.
So God bless your trickle-down caste system, yo.
This is America.
The caste system votes.

 

Kathleen Minor graduated in May 2019 from Berry College with a B.A. in Creative Writing and now volunteers as an assistant coach for the Berry College speech and debate team and as a leader for the Democratic Party of Georgia. Her work has appeared in Ramifications Magazine, Riggwelter Press, and Terror House Magazine, and her poetry received the Academy of American Poets Award from Berry College. She currently lives in Dalton, Georgia. Follow her on Instagram: @thoughttrainderailed.

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Mother’s Letter to Her Best Friend

By Penny Perry

June 5, 1942

Dear Isabel,

I drove my sister to the doctor’s
in Los Angeles. It all happened
so quickly. I promised to bring her
a chocolate phosphate when
it was over.

She joked with the nurses.
Told them if she puked
from ether she would buy
each of them a pair of nylon
stockings.

She insisted on ether because
her friend Hannah had told her
an abortion would be too
painful without it.

In the waiting room, I picked
up a movie magazine.
During the next ten minutes
I heard a harsh breathing
as though she were gasping.
I told myself she would breathe
differently under ether.

A nurse rushed to the telephone
to call emergency.
My knees collapsed.
I remember the sounds of sirens
on the street, footsteps on the stairs,
the horrible hissing sounds
of the oxygen tent.

I remember words like
“her pulse rate is low.”
“She has a seven-month-old baby
at home.” “Isn’t it a pity?”

Finally, the doctor came out
and said “Your sister is dead.”
The bastard didn’t even have
the sense to shut the door.
I could see her head thrown back
on the table.
He told me to stop screaming.

 

Penny Perry has received six Pushcart nominations. Garden Oak Press published her first novel, Selling Pencils and Charlie, and a collection of her poetry, Santa Monica Disposal and Salvage. New poems are forthcoming in Earth’s Daughters, Lips, the Paterson Literary Review, and the San Diego Poetry Annual. She is the fiction/nonfiction editor of Knot Literary Journal online.