Poems that Speak Out Against Violence and for Embrace - Donna Vorreyer

If the back & arms you carry riddle with black

spots & marks made by birds who don’t want us here—

I will remind you: There are people who did this before us,

brown & black-spotted, yellow, with rattails,

born from what others did not want & loathed & aimed

to never let belong, & so, we are here today—

the field is wide. We make saliva from root & light.

Our spikelets grow, & do you feel the wind?

       - Joe Jiménez, Smutgrass

Orlando. Dhaka. Istanbul. Baghdad. Medina. Nice. The killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, and the murder of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge. This summer, terrible bigotry and violence have rent our global community. The killings must end, and we in the poetry community must contribute in any way we can. As we search for answers to these horrors and for ways to combat hatred and prejudice, we are reminded of poetry’s capacity to respond to violence, to help us regenerate, like spikelets sprouting in a contested field, claiming our public spaces for everyone.

In solidarity with all those targeted at home and abroad, from the LGBT community in the United States to devastated families of Baghdad, Split This Rock is offering its blog as a Virtual Open Mic. Over the next couple of weeks, from July 14 to 28, we are requesting poems in response to and against violence toward marginalized communities. After the Virtual Open Mic closes, we hope to print out and mail all of the poems to Congress and the National Rifle Association.

We are accepting poems through July 28; for more information, read the initial post here.

***

prayer after the first week of July
by Donna Vorreyer

I huddle in unfounded panic
slam the windows, catching tufts
of bright flowers, flattening them
with the weight of the sill

while the ghost house brims with
those who have lost trials by
existence and generations
wait for the code to switch

I dream a circle of priests--
a hundred collars, a hundred glimpses
of white peeking out from under
black bodies --

help me not to be the collar
help me throw the window wide