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.

Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem of the Week widely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!

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