Poems of Persistence, Solidarity, and Refuge – Leonora Simonovis

We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.  ― Gwendolyn Brooks  

As we journey through political, economic, and global health crises, we turn to poetry to share truths that unearth underlying causes, illuminate impacts, and insist on transformative change. For many of us, today’s challenges are not new. The struggle of isolation, economic insecurity, inadequate medical care, deadly institutionalized negligence, governmental decisions that put Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian, disabled, sick, and other structurally precarious people at greater risk are not new. Today, many more people are experiencing the vulnerability of these unrelenting issues. We recognize this opportunity for a heightened awareness of how our very survival depends on one another.

Poetry can help keep the flame of resilience, solidarity, and resistance alive in us. It can help us process and move through grief, anger, loneliness. Poetry can be a comfort when the most necessary actions are to rest and recover. It can remind us of what’s at stake, that our lives and legacy are worth the fight. As cultural workers, we know that culture shapes our political and social imagination at a foundational level. As poets, we can use poetry to map what is, what has been, and possibly, the way forward, including the reasons not to return to what does not honor and protect our lives, our communities, and our planet.

From late April to mid-May, Split This Rock asked poets to send the words they chant to get out of bed, to raise their fists, to encourage their kin, to remind us, as this crisis does, that “we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.” To read all of these poems, visit Split This Rock’s website.

***

Ode to Piojos
By Leonora Simonovis

A nymph slid

from a blade of hair

onto my homework,

little legs pedaling

air. I let it walk

away. The principal

called me sucia, expelled

me until I proved

I was clean. Third worlder

he called me. You should’ve

never come. I went home

thinking New Haven

is a misleading name

for a city. My mother

combed, washed,

and sprayed my scalp.

I felt them running,

their house on fire.

We kill them, yet they

come back. Resilience

has a piojo’s wisdom.

When I went back

to school they checked

my head. Gone

the secretary said.

The principal frowned

not yet

Split This Rock · Leonora Simonovis Ode to Piojos Audio

Listen as Leonora Simonovis reads “Ode to Piojos.”

Poems of Persistence, Solidarity, and Refuge – Mercedes Lawry

We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.  ― Gwendolyn Brooks  

As we journey through political, economic, and global health crises, we turn to poetry to share truths that unearth underlying causes, illuminate impacts, and insist on transformative change. For many of us, today’s challenges are not new. The struggle of isolation, economic insecurity, inadequate medical care, deadly institutionalized negligence, governmental decisions that put Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian, disabled, sick, and other structurally precarious people at greater risk are not new. Today, many more people are experiencing the vulnerability of these unrelenting issues. We recognize this opportunity for a heightened awareness of how our very survival depends on one another.

Poetry can help keep the flame of resilience, solidarity, and resistance alive in us. It can help us process and move through grief, anger, loneliness. Poetry can be a comfort when the most necessary actions are to rest and recover. It can remind us of what’s at stake, that our lives and legacy are worth the fight. As cultural workers, we know that culture shapes our political and social imagination at a foundational level. As poets, we can use poetry to map what is, what has been, and possibly, the way forward, including the reasons not to return to what does not honor and protect our lives, our communities, and our planet. 

From late April to mid-May, Split This Rock asked poets to send the words they chant to get out of bed, to raise their fists, to encourage their kin, to remind us, as this crisis does, that “we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.” To read all of these poems, visit Split This Rock’s website.

***

In the Early Garden with Reason
By Mercedes Lawry

How did that one huge fist

of a cloud form, alone

in the empty sky? What is weather

but a moment in time

surrounded by atmospheric jazz,

a roil of ions, collision and hiss?

I am sometimes in awe

and sometimes puzzled.

There is no telling what will shake you up.

March wrestled itself in

trailing webs of frost.

I take cold comfort in the crocus,

plum and yellow, moon-white,

in the emerging green furls.

How does this stack up against

the scofflaws flapping their greedy hands?

You pay attention or you don’t.

You plant the early peas and the onions,

knowing the slugs are making their way.

You swallow the cold wind and are glad of it.

Split This Rock · Mercedes Lawry In The Early Garden With Reason Audio

Listen as Mercedes Lawry reads "In the Early Garden with Reason."

Previously published in Theodate, 2012. 

Poems of Persistence, Solidarity, and Refuge – Emily K. Michael

We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.  ― Gwendolyn Brooks  

As we journey through political, economic, and global health crises, we turn to poetry to share truths that unearth underlying causes, illuminate impacts, and insist on transformative change. For many of us, today’s challenges are not new. The struggle of isolation, economic insecurity, inadequate medical care, deadly institutionalized negligence, governmental decisions that put Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian, disabled, sick, and other structurally precarious people at greater risk are not new. Today, many more people are experiencing the vulnerability of these unrelenting issues. We recognize this opportunity for a heightened awareness of how our very survival depends on one another.

Poetry can help keep the flame of resilience, solidarity, and resistance alive in us. It can help us process and move through grief, anger, loneliness. Poetry can be a comfort when the most necessary actions are to rest and recover. It can remind us of what’s at stake, that our lives and legacy are worth the fight. As cultural workers, we know that culture shapes our political and social imagination at a foundational level. As poets, we can use poetry to map what is, what has been, and possibly, the way forward, including the reasons not to return to what does not honor and protect our lives, our communities, and our planet.

From late April to mid-May, Split This Rock asked poets to send the words  they chant to get out of bed, to raise their fists, to encourage their kin, to remind us, as this crisis does, that “we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.” To read all of these poems, visit Split This Rock’s website.

***

Because I Hired a Friend
By Emily K. Michael

A gentle hand adjusts the lift of my chin,

a soft voice commends my expression.

She steps back and tells me not to worry.

Beside me on the iron bench the dog’s tongue

hangs out. He didn’t want to hop up here—

but with much praise and tapping

of the vacant space at my left, I persuaded him.

Now he leans into my lap. Glossy black

along the crushed grape of my dress,

he nuzzles the fringed scarf in my hands.

The photographer says, Look up.

She scales the ironwork and foregrounds

herself against the summer evening.

I see her silhouette, fighting wind and gravity—

listen for the camera’s capable chirps, and smile.

I know my dog’s nearness, generous and warm.

Split This Rock · Emily K. Michael_Because I Hired a Friend_Audio

Listen as Emily K. Michael reads "Because I Hired a Friend."

Poems of Persistence, Solidarity, and Refuge – Olatunde Osinaike

We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.  ― Gwendolyn Brooks  

As we journey through political, economic, and global health crises, we turn to poetry to share truths that unearth underlying causes, illuminate impacts, and insist on transformative change. For many of us, today’s challenges are not new. The struggle of isolation, economic insecurity, inadequate medical care, deadly institutionalized negligence, governmental decisions that put Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian, disabled, sick, and other structurally precarious people at greater risk are not new. Today, many more people are experiencing the vulnerability of these unrelenting issues. We recognize this opportunity for a heightened awareness of how our very survival depends on one another.

Poetry can help keep the flame of resilience, solidarity, and resistance alive in us. It can help us process and move through grief, anger, loneliness. Poetry can be a comfort when the most necessary actions are to rest and recover. It can remind us of what’s at stake, that our lives and legacy are worth the fight. As cultural workers, we know that culture shapes our political and social imagination at a foundational level. As poets, we can use poetry to map what is, what has been, and possibly, the way forward, including the reasons not to return to what does not honor and protect our lives, our communities, and our planet.

From late April to mid-May, Split This Rock asked poets to send the words they chant to get out of bed, to raise their fists, to encourage their kin, to remind us, as this crisis does, that “we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.” To read all of these poems, visit Split This Rock’s website.

***

Nevertheless
By Olatunde Osinaike

"When I walk into church, I only see pictures of white angels. Why?"―Eartha Kitt

I want to take this time to focus on the timeless, as certain ones take

up arms to remove the lifetimes of those like me. My favorite word

above: a dove that sounds like I forgive myself, like a red redacted,

like a gospel according to the camaraderie I can make cousins out of.

There is no new ecclesiastical under the sun. No shortage of my people

sporting basketball shorts beneath true religion jeans. We reincarnate

every morning in these precincts with the good news delivered more

than once already. The protests of messengers sent down, the blaze

after the crossfire, a chosen people who are either a jaywalk away

from the love of our lives or our lives left to love. I have found that

the self can be its own exodus, be a black sitcom or an intercessor

for the one who waits but never goes. When I say my favorite word,

I think of how often our joy can become a win-win, how the pores of

a mother can cup holy water. Some say the world is still becoming,

but no, our angels are arrived. They are in the streets where peace

is sold separately and critique is still, policed. They stay in the cut

and on exhibit, like a glass-stained window meant to color the light.

Know we have everything in common. Nobody move. I want to

capture this moment where we are one with the unease that stomachs

us like a morning rush. How we might fill in the blank with our story,

our chalices kept next to our paper plates, our fried and our black-eyed,

our dressing, our Lawry’s, our fridge tetris, and most of all, our seconds. 

Split This Rock · Olatunde Osinaike Nevertheless Audio

Listen as Olatunde Osinaike reads "Nevertheless."

Poems of Persistence, Solidarity, and Refuge – Jennifer Lentfer

We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.  ― Gwendolyn Brooks  

As we journey through political, economic, and global health crises, we turn to poetry to share truths that unearth underlying causes, illuminate impacts, and insist on transformative change. For many of us, today’s challenges are not new. The struggle of isolation, economic insecurity, inadequate medical care, deadly institutionalized negligence, governmental decisions that put Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian, disabled, sick, and other structurally precarious people at greater risk are not new. Today, many more people are experiencing the vulnerability of these unrelenting issues. We recognize this opportunity for a heightened awareness of how our very survival depends on one another.

Poetry can help keep the flame of resilience, solidarity, and resistance alive in us. It can help us process and move through grief, anger, loneliness. Poetry can be a comfort when the most necessary actions are to rest and recover. It can remind us of what’s at stake, that our lives and legacy are worth the fight. As cultural workers, we know that culture shapes our political and social imagination at a foundational level. As poets, we can use poetry to map what is, what has been, and possibly, the way forward, including the reasons not to return to what does not honor and protect our lives, our communities, and our planet.

We asked poets to give us the words they chant to get out of bed, to raise their fists, to encourage their kin, to remind us, as this crisis does, that “we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.” To read all of these poems, visit Split This Rock’s website.

***

This body is made

By Jennifer Lentfer

This body is made of resistance.

Its defiance muscle, its beating heart

--as long as it's beating--

is strong.

But not without its softness,

not without its brokenness,

which twinges,

it seems,

rather constantly

during a pandemic,

when this body is at once

utterly safe and contained and under threat and free.

This body is made of resistance.

The virus is not what can ravage it.

This body has tricked oblivion, and

erasure, and again and again

and it will again.

This body is made for its

place, this place,

until it is not.

Covenants with it, with the breath of us, have been

repeatedly broken.

Yet still it stands.

This body breathes and moves

and writes and cooks and

dances and weeps and shouts

and releases

with pleasure and shaking and prayer.

This body is here.

It is mine, ours.

And it will not recede in fear.

This body was forged by resistance.

This body was finally cherished

through resistance.

Let me not forget, this body

was born of love.

Listen as Jennifer Lentfer reads "This body is made."

Poems of Persistence, Solidarity, and Refuge – Shooooz

We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.  ― Gwendolyn Brooks  

As we journey through political, economic, and global health crises, we turn to poetry to share truths that unearth underlying causes, illuminate impacts, and insist on transformative change. For many of us, today’s challenges are not new. The struggle of isolation, economic insecurity, inadequate medical care, deadly institutionalized negligence, governmental decisions that put Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian, disabled, sick, and other structurally precarious people at greater risk are not new. Today, many more people are experiencing the vulnerability of these unrelenting issues. We recognize this opportunity for a heightened awareness of how our very survival depends on one another.

Poetry can help keep the flame of resilience, solidarity, and resistance alive in us. It can help us process and move through grief, anger, loneliness. Poetry can be a comfort when the most necessary actions are to rest and recover. It can remind us of what’s at stake, that our lives and legacy are worth the fight. As cultural workers, we know that culture shapes our political and social imagination at a foundational level. As poets, we can use poetry to map what is, what has been, and possibly, the way forward, including the reasons not to return to what does not honor and protect our lives, our communities, and our planet.

We asked poets to give us the words they chant to get out of bed, to raise their fists, to encourage their kin, to remind us, as this crisis does, that “we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.” To read all of these poems, visit Split This Rock’s website.

***

Oh, Angry America
By Shooooz

I took a walk round the block           today
feeling you

                                                    step for step

behind me –        it surprised me because

I was also seeing you

                                                       in parallel

behind my brother                a block away.

like Satan

you manage to be everywhere

when I quicken my pace I feel you match it

                                                               I imagine

it must be weird for you,                 who wants

so badly to pull ahead                             to find

yourself always a few steps behind

                                                          giving chase

                                                               by choice.

but like Satan

you manage to be everywhere

everywhere, except

                                                            in the lead

where you want to be

                                                                  instead

you paint maps in hot lead             charting a

path to your supremacy

                                                         uncontested

an empty playing field is the only one     you

consider fair.

so like Satan

you manage to be everywhere

and when I beg you to lift those hands off of

me                                                 or my brother

you raise them

                                in a mockery of surrender

                                                               or terror

you beg me

                              with laughter in your voice

not to hurt you         as you curl three fingers

to make a gun of your fist

                      lead ready to scream from flesh

and when I                      look down the barrel

                                        of your pointed finger

and when I            gather my nerve to charge

at you                          you are no longer there

and when I               look up from the ground

I find your steel-eyed stare.

‘cause like Satan

you manage to be everywhere

Split This Rock · Shooooz_Oh_Angry_America_Audio

Listen as Shooooz reads "Oh, Angry America."

Poems of Persistence, Solidarity, and Refuge – Ayling Dominguez

We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.  ― Gwendolyn Brooks  

As we journey through political, economic, and global health crises, we turn to poetry to share truths that unearth underlying causes, illuminate impacts, and insist on transformative change. For many of us, today’s challenges are not new. The struggle of isolation, economic insecurity, inadequate medical care, deadly institutionalized negligence, governmental decisions that put Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian, disabled, sick, and other structurally precarious people at greater risk are not new. Today, many more people are experiencing the vulnerability of these unrelenting issues. We recognize this opportunity for a heightened awareness of how our very survival depends on one another.

Poetry can help keep the flame of resilience, solidarity, and resistance alive in us. It can help us process and move through grief, anger, loneliness. Poetry can be a comfort when the most necessary actions are to rest and recover. It can remind us of what’s at stake, that our lives and legacy are worth the fight. As cultural workers, we know that culture shapes our political and social imagination at a foundational level. As poets, we can use poetry to map what is, what has been, and possibly, the way forward, including the reasons not to return to what does not honor and protect our lives, our communities, and our planet.

We asked poets to give us the words they chant to get out of bed, to raise their fists, to encourage their kin, to remind us, as this crisis does, that “we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.” To read all of these poems, visit Split This Rock’s website.

***

Will You?

By Ayling Dominguez

When he speaks in hyperbole it is legitimate

When I do it is

Unfounded

Exaggerated

Another language

Without basis

He speaks his mind without ever thinking twice

But for me, carelessness is too overpriced

Can’t afford not to crash test every thought

And maybe that’s just the way it is when

Meticulous planning runs in the blood

Same way my mother did in the mud

Waited for rain to obstruct border cameras

Render her a bit harder to see

Migrants got that shit down to a science

Because they know better

Know that for us, it is ill-advised

To roll the dice

That if I did, I’d probably get snake eyes

Even though chances of that are 1/36. 2.7%.

And I’ve only ever scored 90-above

2x the work to get half as far

And since it’s numbers we speak of

Oh, I would like to be counted.

But not the way you do

With two red hands’ ten greedy fingers

I am

too

much to be held

& not up for inspection from atop your high horse or watchtower

My fuller consideration

Requires your dismounting

Climb down

Count with your toes

Look like a fool as you attempt to

adjust, adapt — after all

We’ve always had to

Then again

Maybe I don’t just want to be counted, but counted justly;

Maybe instead

If given the option

I’d ask to be

turned into a tree seed

And planted

But only if

you would stop turning me into money

And only if

you would recognize and do right by Native family

Only if

You would

Adjust, adapt

after all

We’ve always had to

Split This Rock · Ayling Dominguez Will You? Audio

Listen as Ayling Dominguez reads “Will You?”