Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience – JP Howard

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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bedtime poem for america

By JP Howard

this body is black is blue is you

you a country i won’t ever trust

this country is foreign

this foreign is familiar

tastes almost like home

like mama’s peach cobbler gone bad

this blue is my body

this red is my blood

this blood tastes like home

these stars sewn on

black of my skin

shine when night comes

i wear this tattoo for you

america

spread your white sheets on my bed

tomorrow i will rip you to shreds