Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Poem of the Week: Elliott batTzedek

















Sunday Afternoon as Oil Pours into the Gulf


Across a small suburban lawn

a very large man is riding

a very large tractor mower

with a bin so the clippings

won't have to be raked


while his young son is driving

his miniature Hummer

around and around the cull-du-sac


and my large ass is planted

in a chair in the house,

AC blasting,

scanning the internet

for photos of the horror,

and feeling sick

as I view them.


-Elliott batTzedek



Used by permission.


Elliott batTzedek is finishing the MFAs in Poetry and Poetry in Translation at Drew University. She works as a literacy program designer, adjunct graduate school faculty, general gadfly in the face of the powerful, and co-leader of Fringes, a poetry-based, feminist, non-zionist havurah in Philadelphia. Her work has appeared recently in Poetica, Poemeleon, Trivia, Naugatuck River Review, and Sinister Wisdom.


batTzedek attended Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness 2008 and 2010.


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Split This Rock
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info@splitthisrock.org
202-787-5210

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