Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience – Beth Copeland

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, explicitly condones or implies a call for violence, 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. 

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Dissolution
by Beth Copeland

Years of your sweaty Rolling

Rock water rings

on table tops, skid-marked

BVDs on the bathroom

floor, smelly socks on Cheeto

crumb-encrusted rugs

while you’re comatose

on the couch, feet

propped up and egging on that

bully to brag about grabbin’

‘em by the pussy. When he

ridiculed me for not

being a 10, who’d

you defend? He

mocked that reporter

but hounds you for freebies, 

knowing my cousin George

has cerebral

palsy. You two plan

to build a wall around our shotgun

shack after bulldozing sacred

burial grounds. A glacier

ain’t gonna melt in my mouth

while you bromance

that prick. Keep the car,

bank account, and our crib.

See you in court, America.

I’m suing for sole custody.