Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience – Albert DeGenova

As the incoming administration builds its agenda of attack on marginalized people, on freedom of speech, on the earth itself, poetry will continue to be an essential voice of resistance. Poets will speak out in solidarity, united against hatred, systemic oppression, and violence and for justice, beauty, and community.

In this spirit, Split This Rock is offering its blog as a Virtual Open Mic. For the rest of this frightening month, January of 2017, we invite you to send us poems of resistance, power, and resilience.

We will post every poem we receive unless it is offensive (containing language that is derogatory toward marginalized groups, that belittles, uses hurtful stereotypes, etc.). After the Virtual Open Mic closes, we hope to print out and mail all of the poems to the White House.

For guidelines on how to submit poems for this call, visit the Call for Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience blog post. 

***

After the election of 2016, tell the awful truth
by Albert DeGenova

Needing to indulge my sadness in hot sauce and an illicit beer I take my lunch hour at Buffalo Wild Wings

where I sit within eye-shot of 19 TVs where six different football uniforms parade and battle, where 

golfers miss putts, where commentators critique last Sunday’s quarterback and all the sound on all the 

TVs is turned down, drowned by a constant dance beat, the lyrics unintelligible in the din of laughter and 

happy birthday echoing echoing echoing as if the seas didn’t part, the tectonic plates didn’t shift, the 

world hasn’t begun to spin backward, all our rivers flowing in reverse.  The voters are back to their soma 

of sports and carbohydrates in this Brave New World that is not a fiction.  I write one true sentence, our 

only last defense -- Bear witness.