Poetry – Page 12 – Writers Resist

Six Feet Is All We Need

By Robert Knox

Generally speaking, I’m pretty good
at keeping my distance
In fact, for days on end I’m practically
sheltering in place,
possibly even self-quarantining,
though I’m not sure where one of these nonce phrases
leaves off, and the other begins.

I did, however, break solitude to
stroll with my bestie
to the post office, where she may well have
violated her parole,
by engaging with a postal clerk
over required postage for an early draft
of our tax returns,
seeing that our customary live inquisition
was deferred
for all the appropriate public health protocols

And then, totally on my moral dime
for which I assume complete civic responsibility
we stopped at the nearly closed coffee shop,
all its tables lying sidewise against the wall,
where, in all probability,
I most infringed upon the magic circle,
pointing a blue surgically-gloved finger
at the blueberry scone
for which I felt a pounding need

transgressing that six-foot safety zone,
as if, after all these years,
once more
leaving room for the Holy Ghost
on the dance floor whose like I fear
never to know again.
to fox-trot with the pastry of my choice,
having discovered
by the bane, and boon, of enforced separation
from my fellow creatures,
that all we need in life is six feet
of safe and clean and healthy air

and at its end, those six feet under.

Robert Knox is a poet, fiction writer, and Boston Globe correspondent. As a contributing editor for the online poetry journal, Verse-Virtual, his poems appear regularly on that site. They have also appeared in journals such as The American Journal of Poetry, South Florida Poetry Journal, New Verse News, Unlikely Stories, and others. His poetry chapbook Gardeners Do It With Their Hands Dirty, published in 2017, was nominated for a Massachusetts Best Book award. He was recently named the winner of the 2019 Anita McAndrews Poetry Award.

Photo by Scott Nothwehr on Unsplash.

Grace in the Time of the Virus

By Melanie Bell

Take this time
For yourself.
Everyone around you
Is doing the same,
Snatching the last eggs from air.
You start, you care
A little too much,
Don’t finish the chapter
You intended to write.
Everybody’s chapters
Are unfinished, now,
Some cut off mid-sentence,
The foot suspended midair,
The period still to come.

You are alive.
Remember, every breath,
Hold in the droplets
Lest they infect.
Act as if you are the virus.
It lives inside all of us now,
Eating our cereal, oatmeal,
That bread we were lucky to get.
So does grace.
Remember, it whispers,
Not to touch your face.
This is how best to avoid
A shelter in place.

Grace puppets your body
And motivates your limbs.
Grace closes restaurants and gyms.
Grace in the faces of loved ones on the screen,
Of tweets reaching out,
All those hearts behind the news, news, news,
All those people dancing in their kitchen
And smiling at you.

Melanie Bell holds an MA in Creative Writing from Concordia University and has written for various publications including Autostraddle, Cicada, The Fiddlehead, Every Day Fiction, and CV2. She’s the co-author of a nonfiction book, The Modern Enneagram (Althea Press, 2017). You can visit her website at InspireEnvisioning.com.

Photo by Wesley Tingey on Unsplash.

Whiteness in Bloom

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By Jill McDonough

Thinking about whiteness, what it is and what
it does, we go to the MFA to see Art
in Bloom. Groups of white suburban women,
garden clubs, look at art, arrange some flowers
to look like the art. Or something. Lilies scattered
over scaffolding: the Rape of the Sabine Women;
a column of callas: the Dead Body of Christ.
Older white women figuring out the flowers always
crack me up. One group looked at a boat of flowers
under a portrait of an Asian guy and was like huh?
So one of the ladies read the description, pointed to it,
said “You can read about him. He’s a tradesman
from China. So kinda. . . that’s a boat.” I text that
to myself, say it again, delighted. This is the kind
of whiteness I’ve come to see. We go every year, think
it’s hilarious, like seeing parodies of our slightly
older selves, a little richer, continuing to come
here but without irony. There are phrases
from my southern youth about whiteness I remember:
Mightly white of you; Free, white, and 21.
Whiteness was aspirational. Sometimes I wanted more:
more whiteness like more money, the whitest kids
with ski passes from Vail on jacket zippers all winter long.
Invited to be a debutante, join a sorority, I said no,
explained I couldn’t join an all-white group. They have
their own groups, other white people told me, exasperated,
leaving me in confused tears. It’s embarrassing, talking
about whiteness. A hard job, imagining who you want
to be as an adult, barely knowing what it is
you don’t want to have ever done.

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Jill McDonough is the author of Habeas Corpus (Salt, 2008), Oh, James! (Seven Kitchens, 2012), Where You Live (Salt, 2012), Reaper (Alice James, 2017), and Here All Night (Alice James, 2019). The recipient of three Pushcart prizes and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center, the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, and Stanford’s Stegner program, she taught incarcerated college students through Boston University’s Prison Education Program for thirteen years. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Slate, The Nation, The Threepenny Review, and Best American Poetry. She teaches in the MFA program at UMass-Boston and offers College Reading and Writing at a Boston jail. Her website is jillmcdonough.com.

Image credit: Hand-colored photograph by Ogawa Kazumasa, 1896, via Public Domain Review.

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Elongation

By Annette Januzzi Wick

Liz Warren drops from orbit

Venus still lit but out of reach

Back to the old man in the moon

Hope doesn’t float when scorched

Annette Januzzi Wick is a writer, teacher and community connector. She makes her home in Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine, with her husband, who calls her the “worst introvert ever.” Visit annettejwick.com to learn more.

Image credit: NASA

Women’s Day

By Cooper Gillespie

Cooper Gillespie is a writer and musician. She was raised in the wettest parts of the Pacific Northwest but escaped to California as soon as she was able and was overjoyed to discover the sun actually exists. She plays bass and sings in LANDROID and is an MFA candidate at UC Riverside-Palm Desert. Presently, she resides in Landers, CA with her husband and their two enchanting hounds. Learn more at coopergillespie.com.

Photo by Victoria Strukovskaya on Unsplash.

This poem

By Rachel Norman

is a product
of our time.
It wakes up,
gasping
after
dreams
where it
drowned
in ice-melt.
It believes
we can still
change.
I saw it
yesterday,
running,
and asked
why it ran.
It had no
words to
answer with,
only a song
it wrote for
a child
who cried
last night.
It heard
and cried
back in
chorus
— like a wolf,
it said, only
sweeter.

Rachel Norman is a high school student. Currently living in Cambodia, she will be attending the University of Pennsylvania next fall. She has been published in Isacoustic and Falling Star Magazine. She is admittedly idealist, but hopes that eventually we will all take the time to listen to one another, to give each other space to speak, and to be willing to walk towards one another rather than away. Beyond that, she doesn’t know very much.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash.

Teaching Poetry In Prison

By Susan Kelly-DeWitt

I think of him
as a victim
(a veteran)

of war—
every day was
the enemy

in a house-
hold that thought

children should
be punished
with barbed wire,

belts, burns, punches,
pinches, slaps, kicks,

starvation. Where meth
was the vitamin,
sex was the money,

where poverty was
the neighborhood,

poverty was
the country

and nobody ever
called him honey

until high school
freed him to be

part of something
larger than himself,

a gang. They robbed
a convenience
store, someone got

shot, killed—he did not
pull the trigger yet

here he is twenty
years later, life

without parole—
shaking my hand,
smiling at me,

thanking me
for helping him learn

one new word.

Susan Kelly-DeWitt is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow and the author of Gravitational Tug (forthcoming 2020), Spider Season (Cold River Press, 2016), The Fortunate Islands (Marick Press, 2008) and nine previous small press collections and online chapbooks. Her work has appeared in many anthologies, and in print and online journals at home and abroad. She is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and the Northern California Book Reviewers Association. For more information, please visit her website at www.susankelly-dewitt.com.

Photo by Aswin Deth on Unsplash.

I See You

By Laura Martinez

First you are “pollo”
chicken.
Then you are “illegal”
just so much contraband
or “alien”
strange creature from another place
to be feared.
Less than human.

I walk with you
through the streets of Nogales,
sit with you as you prepare
for your journey,
as you pray the rosary.

I see you in the desert
exhausted and thirsty,
and I see your haunted eyes
as you are detained, chained and
branded a “criminal.”
The smell of broken dreams
permeates the air.

You are a human being,
someone’s husband, mother,
daughter, son,
who lives, loves,
suffers, endures,
never deterred from the promise
of a better, safer life.

I am a retired social worker and volunteer with a local humanitarian aid group that supplies water to migrants in the desert. I also am with a local group that coordinates nationally to end the criminalization of migration. My poems have been published locally in the Tucson Weekly and Arizona Daily Star. I am a regular contributor to an online magazine, Downtown LA Life.

Photo credit: Jasper Nance via a Creative Commons license.

Poem Where I Mix-Up Fairy Tales

By Courtney LeBlanc

Sometimes the wolf shows up in a suit,
hair neat and tie perfect, teeth tucked
into his mouth to mimic a sly smile.
Sometimes he’s a friend, sometimes
a stranger, sometimes a lover.
Sometimes I crave the beast’s
hands on my skin, sometimes I want
his bite, sometimes I don’t want
to be rescued. I wish this sleep could
last forever, my still body tended
by the forest and the animals, hidden
from the prince’s kiss — why wake
up in a world that constantly kicks
and takes away my rights. I’ll take
the beast to get his library, I’ll take
the spindle to finally catch up
on my sleep, I’ll take the wolf
to avoid future errands. And
that house of sugar? I’ll lick
every windowpane and wait
for the witch. She won’t push me
into the fire, instead we’ll sit
around it, spiked drinks in hand,
munching on cookies, toasting
our luck at finding one another.

Courtney LeBlanc is the author of Beautiful & Full of Monsters (forthcoming from Vegetarian Alcoholic Press), and chapbooks All in the Family (Bottlecap Press) and The Violence Within (Flutter Press). She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and has her MBA from University of Baltimore and her MFA from Queens University of Charlotte. She loves nail polish, wine, and tattoos. Read her publications on her blog: www.wordperv.com. Follow her on Twitter, @wordperv, and Instagram, @wordperv79.

To the Racist in Line for Chinese Food at Safeway

By Ty.Brack

Yes, you are racist.
I know this because of the way you reduced
Estefania and America to colored women.
I know this because Estefania was helping me
and America was helping you.
You and I ordered the Express Special at the same time.
Estefania returned with my container
before America returned with yours,
and Estefania asked, Rice or chow—
You cut her off with a grumble, Chow mein,
like you were so sure this was America
and she belonged to you.
When Estefania looked at you with confusion,
you looked at Estefania like she was your America,
and you grumbled again, this time with seething chauvinism,
Chow. Mein.
Estefania’s confusion changed to composure
as she said in her smoothest customer service voice,
Sir, I was actually helping the other gentlemen;
America will be right with you.
I watched the creases in your forehead
flatten into lines of seasoned microaggressions,
revealing your familiar fragile rage
over the blanks between the lines.
So I filled in the blanks for you,
Dude, you’re racist.
But I don’t think I offended you enough.
So now you’re in a poem.

Ty.Brack is a poet and teacher from Portland, Oregon, who believes each word should aid in the dismantling of the white heterosexual, cisgender, male supremacy. He performs his work through Portland Poetry Slam, Slamlandia, and Wordlights, and he doubles as a hip hop recording artist, with several singles available on major digital streaming platforms. Follow him on Instagram: @ty.brack.poetry.

Photo credit: DijutalTim via a Creative Commons license.

Indian Doll for Sale at the Thrift Store

By Heather Johnson

A middle-aged woman, orange hair tightly
permed, bones jostling within a threadbare

corset, manhandles the wide-eyed Native
doll—hands pet imitation-buckskin fringe

dress, sewn with plastic beads. A smile parts
lips like the sheer cut of a razor

as she rubs her thumbs over the doll’s sprayed-on
brown skin—as his fingers explored

and claimed the landscape of my body—Your skin looks
great against mine: brown on white. But the doll’s

skin is flawless, no evidence of cutting
scars at the wrists, thighs, shoulder, or at the hollow

between the breasts—he mapped the shimmery
ridges of those scars, too. The doll’s hand-painted

eyes are brown with black flecks, glaze
and shade like mine. The woman clutches

the doll against slack chest, hand cupping
the back of her head—synthetic

black hair parted down the middle, tied
in pigtails, with a headband snug

over her brow, restraining memory. He wrapped
my hair around his fist, pulled until my back

bowed, until he came hard—Can you grow it longer?
I amputated my hair, dyed it punk-red, and the color

bled out slowly in the shower.

Heather Johnson is an androgynous Diné writer from the Navajo Nation, currently residing in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She is at work on a novel, a memoir, and poetry. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming in, Prairie Schooner, the Sigma Tau Delta’s The Triangle, Anti-Heroin Chic, and HeArt (Human Equity Through Art). Her poetry will be anthologized in the Dine Reader: A Guide to Navajo Poetics. Previously, she was a blog contributor to Blue Mesa Review. Her subjects are surviving personal and historical traumas, the experiences of marginalized identities, the complexities of mental health and well-being, and the landscape as sacred. She is also a founding member of the Trigger Warning Writers Group.

Two poems by Cheryl Dumesnil

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Bible Study

Truly I tell you,

The life expectancy

whatever you do

for transgender women of color

for these sisters of mine,

living in the United States

that you do unto me.

is thirty-one years old.

Matthew 25:40

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What You Must Believe

As a mound of dust and a mouthful of spit
is to a brick,

as that one spit-and-dust brick
is to a wall

is to a shelter for a family
fed by one pot

hung over a fire tended all day
and all night, too—

my love, this
is how you will survive—

as a spoon scraping concrete
is to escape—

no matter what they do
to break you.[/fusion_text][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container][fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”no” hundred_percent_height=”no” hundred_percent_height_scroll=”no” hundred_percent_height_center_content=”yes” equal_height_columns=”no” menu_anchor=”” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” class=”” id=”” background_color=”” background_image=”” background_position=”center center” background_repeat=”no-repeat” fade=”no” background_parallax=”none” enable_mobile=”no” parallax_speed=”0.3″ video_mp4=”” video_webm=”” video_ogv=”” video_url=”” video_aspect_ratio=”16:9″ video_loop=”yes” video_mute=”yes” video_preview_image=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” margin_top=”” margin_bottom=”” padding_top=”” padding_right=”” padding_bottom=”” padding_left=””][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ layout=”1_1″ spacing=”” center_content=”no” link=”” target=”_self” min_height=”” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” class=”” id=”” background_color=”” background_image=”” background_position=”left top” background_repeat=”no-repeat” hover_type=”none” border_size=”0″ border_color=”” border_style=”solid” border_position=”all” padding=”” dimension_margin=”” animation_type=”” animation_direction=”left” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_offset=”” last=”no”][fusion_text]

Cheryl Dumesnil is the author of two books of poetry, Showtime at the Ministry of Lost Causes and In Praise of Falling (University of Pittsburgh Press), and a memoir, Love Song for Baby X (Ig Publishing). A freelance writer and writing coach, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her wife and two kids. Read more about Cheryl here.

Photo credit: Francisco Gonzalez via a Creative Commons license.

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Subliminal and Unanimous Dreams of the Future

By Kimberly Kaufman

In the shadowy, damp cities of our eon
no Martian parent will guilt their children
into eating their slimy green protein crumbles
with stories of the starving Children of Earth

As the dust storms rage above no Martian
child will flick internal game consoles, the
giant screens their only chance to marvel at
the blue, cool expanse of the Pacific ocean

No Martian will stagger through the thick,
viscous gravity, envying Earth refugees
who had a chance to spin and fall in warm air
without seventy pounds of protective plastic shell

As Martian children grow to moody, tense teens
they will never dream of an ozone layer keeping
them safe from this hostile universe that waits for
the first opportunity to twist their skulls inside out

We will not look out the window
to a night filled with two shrunken,
misshapen moons,
whispering,
the Earth
she was irreplaceable,
but we lost her

I have previously published speculative fiction in various literary magazines, including Metaphorosis, The Future Fire, and Jersey Devil Press. A brief list of things I’ve been, am, or will be: a student of Spanish literature, a lawyer, a punk bass guitarist, a traveler, a quiet child, and a mountain climber.

Photo credit: Mars dust storm, NASA.

Wealth of Nations

By Gemma Cooper-Novack

Jeff Bezos wrote a
capitalist haiku and
we all live in it

Gemma Cooper-Novack’s debut poetry collection We Might As Well Be Underwater, a finalist for the Central New York Book Award, was published by Unsolicited Press in 2017. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in more than twenty journals, including Glass, Midway Journal, and Lambda’s Poetry Spotlight, and have been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes and Best of the Net Awards. Her plays have been produced in Chicago, Boston, and New York. Gemma was a runner-up for the 2016 James Jones First Novel Fellowship, and she has been awarded artist residencies from Catalonia to Virginia and a grant from the Barbara Deming Fund. She is a doctoral candidate in Literacy Education at Syracuse University.

Photo by Rick Tap on Unsplash.

what’s happening with the boys

By Lou Ella Hickman

what’s happening with the boys

our prayers & thoughts

bullied?

bang, bang you’re dead

a moment of silence

easy access?

what’s happening with the boys

new laws won’t help

video games?

bang, bang you’re dead

our prayers & thoughts

absent fathers?

what’s happening with the boys

a moment of silence

movies, tv?

bang, bang you’re dead

new laws won’t help

copy cat?

what’s happening with the boys

our thoughts and prayers

a. none of the above
b. all of the above
c. some of the above

flood gates break open voices into the streets

we’ve had enough we’ve had enough

listen please listen how can we get you to listen

to what’s happening with the boys

Sister Lou Ella has a master’s in theology from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio and is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director, poet, and writer. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines, including, America, First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and new verse news as well as in four anthologies: The Night’s Magician: Poems about the Moon, edited by Philip Kolin and Sue Brannan Walker, Down to the Dark River edited by Philip Kolin, Secrets, edited by Sue Brannan Walker, and After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events, edited by Tom Lombardo. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017. Her first book of poetry, entitled she: robed and wordless, was published in 2015 (Press 53).

Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash.

On Sending Her Back

By Abby E. Murray

for Ilhan Omar

The man with no back
to return to—
which is to say there is
no path to safety
from the cliff where he clings,
no escape to remind him
the way back is his—
has wished to banish,
send back, cast out
a woman whose back is
all of us, whose back is
her body, a root, a beam
that bears the weight
of home and all its backache,
walls built up and smashed
around the same tree
that makes its rings
into shelters for shelter
and the origin of leaves
that backflip in the sun,
their dance of gratitude—
which is to say
this woman’s back is a gift,
given to her once
by her mother, a stack
of crowns stuffed
with the nerve to rise
and remain and never
turn back toward a time
when she was not,
when her steps
couldn’t be traced
back to the place where
she is, here, with us,
an orchard of spines
that grow deeper
each time a woman
is told to go back.

Abby E. Murray is the editor of Collateral, a literary journal publishing work concerned with the impact of violent conflict and military service beyond the combat zone. She is the poet laureate for the city of Tacoma, Washington, where she teaches community workshops for veterans, civilians, military families, and undocumented youth. Her first book, Hail and Farewell, won the Perugia Press Poetry Prize and will be released in September 2019.

Photo credit: Chris Devers via a Creative Commons license.

Longing to Belong

By Elizabeth Weaver

girl with eyes too large and
milky teeth fairies must wait
years for in country that ripped
her from Mama locked her in
metal cage no laughter crosses
her howl swells into lost
others’ sounds for families
babies resounds past soiled
dreams strips belonging as
those ripping teach children
how arms are weapons

Elizabeth Weaver, M.A., is a Squaw Valley Community Writer whose work appears in dirtcakes, RATTLE, 5AM, and other publications. Visit her website at ElizabethOakleyWeaver.com.

Photo credit: United Nations.

We Are Not America

By Diane Elayne Dees

America is Mexico, Columbia, Brazil,
Argentina, Canada. It is Paraguay,
El Salvador, Guatemala, Uruguay, Venezuela,
and Chile. America is Ecuador, Nicaragua,
Bolivia, and Honduras. It requires a lot of nerve
to take the name of two huge continents
and make it your own. We are the man
who stands against the bar, sprawling
his arms and legs so wide that no one can sit.
We are the woman who takes up three seats
with her body, her purse, her computer,
and her yoga mat. We are the truck
that occupies two parking spaces,
the teenager who sits in the middle of the floor
and makes everyone step around him.
We are a lot of things, both good and bad.
But we are not America.

Diane Elayne Dees’ poetry has been published in many journals and anthologies. Diane, who lives in Covington, Louisiana, also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that delivers news and commentary on women’s professional tennis throughout the world. Her chapbook, I Can’t Recall Exactly When I Died, is forthcoming form Clare Songbirds Publishing House. Also forthcoming, from Kelsay Books, is Diane’s chapbook, Coronary Truth. Her author blog is Diane Elayne Dees.

Daughteret is not a made-up word

By H. E. Casson

for Tarana Burke

Your whisper met with stone and echoed back
“A cave is not a prison,” ricocheted
Ancestors live in each abraded crack
A line from renegade to renegade

I see your eyes are tired, heart is sore
Body bearing scar and gash and grit
In counting these eleven years and more
For all the voices to escape the pit

But thunder brings deluge to drown them out
And scavengers come picking at their bones
The repercussion grows into a shout
A hundred thousand you-are-not-alones

And even as my echoes hit the wall
I’m thankful that you chose to speak at all

H. E. Casson lives in a very small house in Toronto with one human, no pets and 28 plants. They are a library technician and writer whose work has been published in Room, Cricket, Jones Av., (EX)Cite, Smart Moves, and Today’s Parent Toronto, among others.

Poet’s note: When I chose to use the classic form of the sonnet, I realized that, even though sonnet means little song, it sounds male. I imagined the line of daughters going back generations, much the way we have linked histories father to son. As a bit of an aside to myself, I started calling my poem a daughteret instead of a sonnet. This made me think about how quickly women and genderqueer people are mocked for creating words that include us or scratch at the surface of the status quo. I see criticisms that our words are “made up” as though the existing words sprung from nature or were handed down by god. Daughteret is an organic expression of an idea I had when writing about a woman who takes care of so many daughters. When I realized the poem needed a name, I could think of nothing better than to share a word that grew out of my admiration for her.

Photo credit: Lynn Friedman via a Creative Commons license.

Suspension

By Mandy Brown

When their skins have thinned with age,
they will still tell the story: thirteen people
suspended over Portland bridge
to stop a Shell tanker. “I was one of them,”
she will tell his children. “I regret
nothing,” he will tell hers. Living
sometimes means hanging at the end
of a knot. Some dangle by their necks,
counting the breaths. Others ride the swings,
pumping their knees. I have been both,
but these days all I can think about is
how I haven’t come out to my parents
or friends, how my husband and my
poetry are the only beings who know
I am queer and poly, how life was simpler before
I noticed all the oil. He invited a friend
over who could answer so many of my
questions. He teased me as he helped
me choose an outfit and cooked us dinner.
I spent the whole time wondering what
love he must have to expect nothing and
still knot his fingers in mine while I—like the thirteen
lives spinning in air underneath commuting
cars—suspend in limbo to watch her eyes dilate.

Mandy Brown (she/her) is a queer Central Texas poet, a 2019 Poetry Half-Marathon winner, and the 2013 recipient of A Room of Her Own Foundation’s Tillie Olsen Fellowship. Her poetry has been published in Vine Leaves Literary Journal, Extract(s), Eunoia Review, and more. Mandy currently teaches at an alternative school for high-risk students and loves it! Read more at mandyalyssbrown.weebly.com.

Photo credit: Steve Dipaola, Greenpeace.