Laura Grace Weldon – Writers Resist

Miss Suzie Had a Baby, She Named Him Tiny Tim

By Laura Grace Weldon

Outrage drives me outside,
a choice a woman can still make.
I clamber close to our muddy creek
collecting trash caught in fallen branches.
I empty water from a Stroh’s bottle
and battered jug of Cheer detergent.
Pull out blue plastic bags and
an honest-to-God wire hanger.
Untangle a multicolored jump rope
with red wooden handles,
the kind we jumped with during
recess at Pine Elementary School
chanting K.I.S.S.I.N.G., and Cinderella.
Some girls were such good skippers
they didn’t miss a jump till a whistle’s
shrill made us head back in,
line up at the drinking fountain, then
sit every minute of three more hours.
I hear singsong rhymes in my mind
as I walk back with this trash
still feeling our legs leap,
our hair fly in synch,
drumbeat of feet on the ground
the way girls and women
from the beginning
have worked together
while singing in unison.

Laura Grace Weldon lives in a township too tiny for traffic lights where she works as a book editor, teaches writing workshops, and maxes out her library card. Laura served as Ohio’s 2019 Poet of the Year and is the author of four books. lauragraceweldon.com

Photo credit: ErstwhileHuman 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.

Welcome to our September 2022 issue

It’s been hot. Everything’s hot. Global temperatures, national temperaments—even the bees that hover at the birdbath’s edge are plunging into its waters, only to find them warmed by an unrelenting heat dome.

What to do?

Writers Resist offers a cool escape: Don a wet t-shirt, flop before a fan, and read this issue. In it, you’ll find featured works by the following writers and artists.

Katie Avagliano

Dia Calhoun

Heather Dorn

Zoë Fay-Stindt

Howie Good

Morning-meadow Jones

Flavian Mark Lupinetti

René Marzuk

Penny Perry

Tracy Stamper

Jennifer Swallow

Laura Grace Weldon

Please also join us in saying farewell to another beloved editor, and welcoming two new editors.

Ying Wu, one of our dedicated poetry editors, is moving on and shares the following: “It has been an honor and an inspiration to be part of Writers Resist. Since I joined in 2019, our community has grown. I’ve enjoyed the privilege of experiencing voices from all walks of life and parts of the globe—voices driven by hunger for compassion and dignity; by the will to thrive in the face of increasing planetary peril; by the urge to confront the pain of exploitation, intolerance, and subjugation. I believe we can create a better world by amplifying what drives us to speak out, as our words are the bridge between thought and action. I am so grateful to Writers Resist for helping to keep this bridge strong.”

We will miss you, Ying!

René Marzuk joins us as a poetry and prose editor. Accidentally born in Ukraine to Cuban parents, he grew up in Havana, Cuba, and migrated to the United States as an adult. Read a poem by René here.

Holly A. Stovall joins us as a prose editor. Currently writing a thesis for her MFA in Creative Writing at Northwestern University’s School of Professional Studies, she has an MA in Women’s History and a PhD in Spanish Literature.

Read more about our new editors on our About page.

Then, in the relative cool of the evening, join us for an online reading of the September issue’s contributing writers—Saturday 15 October at 5:00 p.m. PACIFIC.

For the Zoom link, email K-B at kbgressitt@gmail.com.

Predators

By Laura Grace Weldon

If a grizzly wanders into your social media
don’t make eye contact or sudden moves.
Abandon the sandwich you were eating, leave
the small square of chocolate you saved for last.

Sharks often appear in parking garages
silent, stealthy, even as you confine
your blood’s scent under a coat pulled tight,
hurry your steps, summon your car’s refuge.

You’re warned away from boa constrictors
although their natural habitat is your manager’s office,
the statehouse, every tightly coiled corporation
crushing you bit by bit.

Predators often smile, extend a hand, act polite.
Beware, the trap may be ready to snap.
Expect the hurt, the trick, the vicious threat,
the unholy fury when you try to walk away.

Laura Grace Weldon served as Ohio’s 2019 Poet of the Year and is the author of four books. She works as a book editor, teaches writing workshops, and maxes out her library card each week. Connect with her at lauragraceweldon.com.

Illustration credit: 1906 illustration of a corporate predator from Arena Magazine, Volume 35, in the public domain.

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.

Scrolling

By Laura Grace Weldon

Two penguin chicks are the only survivors
of a 40,000 bird Antarctic colony.
I imagine fuzzy hatchlings
chirping for food till silent,
scroll on to read
about a dog taught to talk
with an adaptive device. Stella,
a mixed breed, already uses 29 words
although her choices don’t include “why.”

All this bluster about GDP and NASDAQ,
about trends, ratings, followers,
about so-called political divisions
is just Oz shouting
Pay no attention
to that man behind the curtain
to keep us consuming, keep us distracted
keep us from the startling recognition

we are Stella tapping “want” “Jake” “come,”
then tapping “happy” when Jake indeed
comes home at the expected time.
We are the penguins, the ocean,
the plastic debris filling bird bellies.
Everywhere, curtains.

Laura Grace Weldon has published two poetry collections, Blackbird (Grayson 2019) and Tending (Aldrich 2013). She was named Ohio Poet of the Year for 2019. Laura works as a book editor and teaches community-based writing workshops. She lives with vast optimism on a small farm where she’d get more done if she didn’t spend so much time reading library books, cooking weird things, and singing to livestock. Connect with her at lauragraceweldon.com., on Facebook, and on Twitter @earnestdrollery.

Photo by Cassidy Mills on Unsplash.

One Nation, Indivisible

By Laura Grace Weldon

Our daily walk is a simple
necessary practice,
especially now
when each day’s news
spirals us into tighter circles.
Beyond birdsong and breezes we hear
jeering laughter, see teens
jumping on an elderly neighbor’s hay bales,
hooting as their weight breaks
his farm’s winter food into uselessness.
They grew up on this street.
They’ve seen the old man walk the pasture
handpicking weeds wrong for cows
before letting his 30 or so Jerseys,
Guernseys, and Holsteins out to graze.
Seen his falling down house, his rotting fenceposts,
his shoulders bent like a question mark
curving ever closer to the ground.
My husband calls to them,
his voice lost to the wind,
advances toward them, calls again.
Only when he holds up his phone,
yells “dialing the sheriff”
do they angrily leave,
first dumping cans of Coke
on a bale still standing.
All the way home my eyes water in the wind,
streaming as if scratched
by hayseed tossed in the air.
So much already crumbling into chaff.

Laura Grace Weldon is the author of the poetry collections Blackbird and Tending as well as a handbook of alternative education titled Free Range Learning. She works as an editor and leads workshops on memoir, poetry, and creative thinking. Her poetry appears in Verse Daily, J Journal, One: Jacar Press, Neurology, Penman Review, Mom Egg Review, and others. She lives on a small farm in a conservative community, but has strange sculptures in her gardens and peace flags on her porch.

Photo by Art Wave on Unsplash.

Clarion Reminder

By Laura Grace Weldon

The powerful provoke the powerless
to push against one another.
Their power grows by keeping us
in all kinds of prisons.

Yet we are not powerless.

Remember the black bear
roaming Clarion County, Pennsylvania,
its head trapped a month or more
in a metal-ringed pail.

Remember those who chased it for hours,
grabbed it in a perilous embrace,
carefully sawed loose those tight bonds.
Imagine what they felt as the bear
ran free into the woods.
Imagine, too, the bear.

Laura Grace Weldon is the author of a poetry collection, Tending, and a handbook of alternative education, Free Range Learning. She has a collection of essays due out soon. Laura has written poetry with nursing home residents, used poetry to teach conflict resolution, and painted poems on beehives, although her work appears in more conventional places, such as J Journal, Penman Review, Literary Mama, Christian Science Monitor, Mom Egg Review, Dressing Room Poetry Journal, Shot Glass Journal, and others. Connect with her on Facebook, Twitter or at her site, lauragraceweldon.com.

Photo credit: Tiffany Terry via a Creative Commons license.

Border Children on the News

By Laura Grace Weldon

Frantic families send their children
past drug runners and thieves,
through deserts, on tops of freight trains,
over 1,700 miles seeking
refuge at our border.

Tonight, we tweeze sushi into our mouths
under a blast of chilled Happy Hour air.
Screens broadcast dark-eyed children
behind chain link fences
while protestors chant
Go back home! and U-S-A!

A congressman vows to expedite
their return to where they belong.
“Yeah, deprived of a hearing,” we mutter
and a guy eating spicy duck wings
next to us says “There are laws for a reason.”

Agile in conflict studies,
the bartender sets out
complimentary edamame.
Offers refills.
Changes the TV station.
Lets the comprehensible violence
of hockey soothe
as our drinks arrive.

“Border Children on the News” was previously published by Blue Collar Review.

Laura Grace Weldon is the author of a poetry collection titled Tending and a handbook of alternative education, Free Range Learning. She has a collection of essays due out soon. Laura has written poetry with nursing home residents, used poetry to teach conflict resolution, and painted poems on beehives, although her work appears in more conventional places such as J Journal, Penman Review, Literary Mama, Christian Science Monitor, Mom Egg Review, Dressing Room Poetry Journal, Shot Glass Journal, and others. Connect with her on Facebook, Twitter or at her site, lauragraceweldon.com

Photo credit: United Soybean Board via a Creative Commons license.