Tag: Ellen Girardeau Kempler

Poem in Response to Mass Shooting Number 130 in the United States of America 2023

By Ellen Girardeau Kempler

This poem is a scaffolding
built of assault weapons
& high-capacity magazines
for recurring questions I have,
a terrible structure for hanging
reloadable horrors in bright daylight.

What questions?
you might ask. I’m dumbfounded.
I can’t even

answer, can only instruct you
to remain perfectly quiet & listen—
maybe hide behind/under a desk,
evaluate your escape routes,
hug your friends, text your family,
dial 911, take out your ear buds,
stop talking, notice the sound
of your heart throbbing in time
with the blood still mercifully
coursing through your body.

My questions arise again & again
in sudden gasps, forever-startled
intakes of breath, metallic taste of
bile in my mouth, unanswerable,
mute.

Ellen Girardeau Kempler’s poems have appeared in the Dewdrop, Wild Roof Journal, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Narrative Northeast and many other small presses and anthologies. In 2016, she won Ireland’s Blackwater International Poetry Prize and honorable mention in Winning Writers’ Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest. Called “a timely and powerful selection of climate poetics,” her chapbook, Thirty Views of a Changing World: Haiku + Photos, was published in December 2017 by Finishing Line Press. Her next chapbook,  Fire in my Head, Flame in My Heart: Poems of the Pyrocene, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books in 2025.

Photo credit: Stephen Melkisethian via a Creative Commons license.

A note from Writers Resist
Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

Questions/Answers (for Black U.S. citizens applying to register to vote in Selma, Alabama, in 1963—based on actual exams)

By Ellen Girardeau Kempler

 

After you pay your poll tax, Boy, I’ll ask you

how many jellybeans are in the big jar
I keep on my Registrar’s desk?

How many bubbles are in this bar
of soap?

How many seeds are in a watermelon,
any watermelon? (An answer you should
naturally know.)

How many drops of water are in the Alabama River
running faster than you could ever march, under the bridge
named for the KKK’s Grand Dragon, the bridge you’ll have to cross
before the correct answers to my questions even begin to become clear,
before, out of the tear gas fog, you feel the shock of electric cattle prods,
the whack of lead pipes raised to concuss you past thought, only then
will you understand that NO is the answer to ALL of my questions.

Because I am your judge, jury and executioner.
Because NO is the only way we can keep you chained
caged buried burned drowned beaten hanging
in the place where we first brought you,
intended you to stay.

 

Ellen Girardeau Kempler’s poems have appeared in the 2022 Mindful Poetry Anthology, Narrative Northeast, Writers Resist, Phoenix Rising Review, Gold Man Review, Orbis International Poetry Quarterly and many other small presses and anthologies. In 2016, she won Ireland’s Blackwater International Poetry Prize and honorable mention in Winning Writers’ Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest. Called “a timely and powerful selection of climate poetics,” her chapbook, Thirty Views of a Changing World: Haiku + Photos, was published in December 2017 by Finishing Line Press. Learn more at www.ellengirardeaukempler.com and follow her on Instagram @placepoet and Twitter @goodnewsmuse.

Image credit: Courtesy of the poet, an image from the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.

A note from Writers Resist

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

Elegy at the End of a Beach Walk

By Ellen Girardeau Kempler

 

Heat buffets us seaward.
Sunburn sends us home.

We trail wakes
of bags & butts
clamshell packages
& coffee cups.

Styrofoam seeds
sprout like alien plants
neoprene petals
band aid leaves.

Straws take root
in tangled kelp.

Saltwater & sun degrade.

Waves & currents take away.

Great Garbage Patch.

Undersea pyre.

Microplastic harvest
fills the widening gyre.

Turning & turning
in the trash-dimmed tide.
things fall apart.

 

Ellen Girardeau Kempler’s poems have appeared in Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Narrative Northeast, Writers Resist, Phoenix Rising Review, Gold Man Review, Orbis International Poetry Quarterly and many other small presses and anthologies. In 2016, she won Ireland’s Blackwater International Poetry Prize and honorable mention in Winning Writers’ Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest. Called “a timely and powerful selection of climate poetics,” her chapbook, Thirty Views of a Changing World: Haiku + Photos, was published in December 2017 by Finishing Line Press.

Photo by Debbie Hall, a Writers Resist poetry editor

A note from Writers Resist:

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

Street Folk

By Ellen Girardeau Kempler

 

Disembodied. Disenfranchised. Disconnected. Disassociated. Disowned. Disliked.

Distained. Disrespected. Disregarded. Disparaged. Disgraced. Dismissed.

Discarded. Disavowed. Disqualified. Disappointed. Disheartened. Distanced. Disbarred.

Dislocated to:

Dis City,

The Inferno,

Sixth Circle of Hell,

Not in My Backyard,

Planet Earth 00000

(Do not forward. Do not return.) Disappeared.

 

Called “a timely and powerful selection of climate poetics,” Ellen Girardeau Kempler’s first book, Thirty Views of a Changing World: Haiku + Photos, was published in December 2017 by Finishing Line Press. In 2016, she won Ireland’s Blackwater International Poetry Prize and received honorable mention in Winning Writers’ Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest. She posts a daily haiku and photo “anti-selfie” on Instagram @placepoet, you can follow her on Twitter @goodnewsmuse, and she publishes a newsletter called Tiny Letters.

Photo credit: Photo by Fred Pixlab on Unsplash.

Bad News

By Ellen Girardeau Kempler

 

In one stop-
action second
you
spin
in
slow
motion
over the sharp edge
of knowing.

There was then
& there is now.

No scrabbling back
up the cliff face.

No rewind button.

No cartoon-stopping
on the way down.

No spaceship
to beam you away.

No, the pressure
is in the here
& now.

Like the whole ocean
bearing down.

Like chloroform-cotton.

Like a pin
piercing you,
straight through
the thorax.

 

 

Called “a timely and powerful selection of climate poetics,” Ellen Girardeau Kempler’s first book, Thirty Views of a Changing World: Haiku + Photos, was published in December 2017 by Finishing Line Press. In 2016, she won Ireland’s Blackwater International Poetry Prize and received honorable mention in Winning Writers’ Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest. She posts a daily haiku and photo “anti-selfie” @placepoet on Instagram. Follow her on Twitter @goodnewsmuse or visit her website at gold-boat.com.

Photo credit: By Sam Shere (1905–1982) – Zeppelin-ramp de Hindenburg / Hindenburg zeppelin disaster, Public Domain.