Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience – Julie Carr

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. 

***

A fourteen-line poem on healing

by Julie Carr

1. They abused the powdery line
2. and collapsed phantom scaffolding
3. between what we wanted and
4. what we feared
5. Where have you gone in your
6. red dress?
7. Your benign limbs, at once
8. blessed and beautiful
9. Naked as a word
10. you have done nothing worng
11. I cannot freeze sound
12. The body’s erotic intelligence
13. is all that there is
14. and is given