Poems of Persistence, Solidarity, and Refuge – Kristin Davis

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.

***

Content Notice: Domestic abuse, verbal abuse, gender-based
violence

Red not Pink

By Kristin Davis

is a hand print on skin
I’ll give you something to cry about!
I learn to be cheerful
and compliant,

a capillary that rives in my eyes
you’re overreacting
I hold my breath
instead of speaking,

a bitten lip that twitches
your ass is hot in those pants
I pick up the pace
dress differently next time,

a flush that rises on my neck
I know you’re in there!
I tense behind a door
to deny consent,

skin that swells around each little wound
does your husband know
you’re driving the good car?!
insult subordinate to a good laugh.

It is the color of negative ink
eighty cents on the dollar
being spoken over
and overlooked,

the color of heart
just what is it you do all day?
quiet care and keep
noticed only when absent,

the color of blood
coming out of her wherever,
of indignity, of solidarity
of the shirt I wore today.*

*March 8, 2017, the International Day of the Woman

Split This Rock · Kristin Davis_Red Not Pink_Audio

Listen as Kristin Davis reads "Red not Pink."

Previously published in What Rough Beast (March 20, 2017).

Poems of Persistence, Solidarity, and Refuge – Najya Williams

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.

***

the poem requires
By Najya Williams

 

A long time ago

A brilliant woman once told me

“The poem requires what the poem requires.”

I carried it with me

Trying to write the shackles off my wrists

Loosen the gag from my tongue

Wedging a pen between my past and future

Yet it is only now I realize

That I was the poem all along

 

Do you know what it feels like

To stretch the lyrics laced across your shoulders until they fit

One line of prose to be cut and devoured and reassembled again

To make metaphor of the little fires dancing behind your eyes

Praying that they don’t melt everything unrecognizable 

To make hyperbole of the salt water bodies hiding in your lungs

Until the fight feels better fought from the outside looking in

 

Do you know what it feels like

To have the hand of God quiver ever so slightly in the midst of your midnight tremor

To wait for the chain of despair to sink to the bottom of the bloodied ink on the page

To hope that the tears streaming from every pore don’t give away the very last of what is left

 

I always thought

The poem didn’t know what it required

It was my job to manipulate it beautiful

Twist and bend it until its acrobatic instinct overwhelmed the scales

Stack mountains within its stanza so the valleys no longer exist

The plateau never comes

The limits never return

I always thought it was my job to carve the poem

Line by line

Until the bittersweet taste felt like a psalmist praise

Shake the fruit from its limbs

So that when it reaches the ultimate resting place

It forges ahead alone

 

But the poem requires what the poem requires

Without the personification of fear

Without the seamless perfection of imagery in the ghost of a former self’s likeness

Without the internal rhymes internal destruction

Without the word play no longer having fun

 

The poem requires what the poem requires

And now

Life can finally begin

Split This Rock · Najya Williams the poem requires Audio

Listen as Najya Williams reads “the poem requires.”

Poems of Persistence, Solidarity, and Refuge – Grisel Y. Acosta

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.

***

Content Notice: Death of a child, violence in immigration system

We Carry the Earth
By Grisel Y. Acosta

We bring the harvest and lay it at an altar
of bread crust, pierced gold earrings, and the bones of our first born

Banana leaves halo the foundation of her body,
we salt the sand she rests upon, sprinkling the mineral from seashells

We pick translucent grapes and squeeze the juice into our downturned
mouths, lay gardenias to frame her death, perfume the pain within our muscles

You see a carcass of stone, barren of life, bleached ossein, 
we see the child that ran between the Saguaros and wore red Matucana’s in her hair



Cognac woven leather wrapped her brave feet as her toes tipped
sharp rock, skipped over puddles bordering the desert on lucky rain days 

White sun burned through camisas de primos, sent to us del Norte,
worn threads unraveling with each day of wear, cada dia without descanso or certainty

Black hair flying like whipping palms, set aflight from much needed breezes
cooled café skin burning cedar brown with each step on the red tawny dirt taking us closer

Cyan sky hovered over our contorted path, twisted like a sapphire river
pooling into a sea of compadres singing the blues at the frontera, asking, “¿Y de donde tu vienes?”



It must have been the cold
concrete holding her like iron gate
choking her lungs into frozen
prayer, holding her breath
tight within grey mucus and swollen sacs
bubbles of air that stopped
circulating, like language
words that fall dead on icy ears.



mihcacocone
tlahquilli
tlamiz †


Se murio de neumonía. 
There was no water.
There was no soap.
I was taken away from her.
Lloró en la mañana.
She called to me at 3 am.
I was not there.
You were not there. 
We were not there.
We still are not there.
She will continue to cry her song in wind until we are there.
A shriek in the current is free to move, cross, fly beyond the flimsy delusion of barriers. 



Her body will dust your land which is my land which is our land
We do not carry danger to your door
There is no door
There is no danger
There is only land
There is only earth
We carry this Earth on our skin
We carry it in our lungs
We carry it as our body which holds all bodies
Dirt from many tierras that are one tierra
We set it at an altar
We set you at the altar
We set ourselves at the altar
We set our firstborn at the altar
See the altar
See the Earth
Come carry it with us
Carry the child
Carry the family
Carry the people who are your people who are yourselves
You have been invited. 

† The words at the center of the poem are in the Nahuatl language. They mean “dead children,” “tomb,” and “this will end.”

Split This Rock · Grisel Y. Acosta We Carry the Earth Audio

Listen as Grisel Y. Acosta reads “We Carry the Earth.”

Previously published in The Baffler, 2020.

Poems of Persistence, Solidarity, and Refuge – Shadab Fatima

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.

***

Content Notice: Gender-based Violence 

All The Roads I Know
By Shadab Fatima

All the roads I know,

Are named after dead white men.

All the places I know,

Lay on the intersections of roads,

Renamed after dead brown men.

I do not care to know why they were renamed,

Or even named in the first place.

What I know and care about is that,

These roads would still be as unwelcoming to us, regardless of who they are named after.

All the roads I have known have been unwelcoming,

Even if they lead to places I call home.

See,

I know,

All roads lead somewhere.

These do too,

To intersections,

Where one mid day,

A girl was stabbed in broad day light,

With the sun as a witness.

The next day,

Our all girls school gathered us all, to introduce us to a self defense teacher. 

And I couldn’t help but wonder,

If in the all boys school next to us,

All the boys were assembled to introduce them to a teacher,

Who would teach them,

 how to not stab girls when they are angry.

Split This Rock · Shadab Fatima All The Roads I Know Audio

Listen as Shadab Fatima reads “All The Roads I Know.”

Poems of Persistence, Solidarity, and Refuge – Jory Mickelson

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.

***

Content Advisory: Reference to Sexual Assault

Trixter

By Jory Mickelson

I don’t need a magic           

to tell me how fucked & fractured

this world is, nothing                      

can wrap it into wholeness.

Why is it a crime to             

change shape? Why police

a body that won’t                 

hold still? I have been sand

for men who raked             

their hands along my every

side, been water parted &              

pushed through. Been for them

fire too, lit them                  

quick & been lit, pyre we used

to climb the air, breath       

exultant ladder. I’ve been

stone, broke them               

and didn’t break, refused to be

plowed from the earth.                   

I could be something gentle,

wind maybe or grass, dew 

to meet a hand extended to see

what might actually be       

there: this queer, changeable

body, my trixter shape.                  

Give a man the sun & they’ll

walk away as you sift                      

into ash. Ask for water

& they’ll say your anger      

keeps you in the dark.

Split This Rock · Jory Mickelson_Trixter_Audio

Listen as Jory Mickelson reads "Trixter."


Previously published in Indolent Books, What Rough Beast series (October 5, 2018).

Poems of Persistence, Solidarity, and Refuge – Patsy Asuncion

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.

***

Lonely George is Dead
By Patsy Asuncion

We should bow deeply before the orchid and the snail

…before the monarch butterfly and the magnolia tree.

The feeling of respect for all species will help us

recognize the noblest nature in ourselves.
– Nhat Hanh, About Place Journal, May 2019

From filthy bilges of merchant ships

came furry invaders that gorged

their bellies with raw natives,

overran the islands.

Human gods later brought wolfsnails

to “biocontrol” other island creatures

as if using one life to kill another

were sanctified, but

the wolfsnails disobeyed

the human gods and slayed

scores of smaller natives.

Human gods picked favorites

among the living, like chameleons as pets,

that had huge appetites for little natives.

Loss of forest vegetation by human’s

pigs and goats drove native survivors

to the safety of mountain trees, a banishment

of innocence by entitlement.

The last survivor of his tribe, kept alive

in a lab fourteen years, Lonely George

has died, the last Hawaiian tree snail

of Achatinella apexfulva, one of the

first species discovered on the islands.

Three-fourths of snail species in Hawaii

are now extinct, forever dead. Ten remaining

species are expected to join George this decade,

a dooms day assembly line. Human gods may be unconcerned

by yet another foreigner’s death until they realize

tree snails control fungal abundance and diversity,

vital necessities. But, survival of the gods would require

they look away from their own needs first.

Split This Rock · Patsy Asuncion Lonely George Is Dead Audio

Listen as Patsy Asuncion reads "Lonely George is Dead."

Poems of Persistence, Solidarity, and Refuge – Katherine Anderson Howell

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.

***

Hestia Vs. The Pandemic
By Katherine Anderson Howell

Yes, I sit and eat potato chips 
right out of the bag.
No goddess in the know
would try to clean up this 
state of affairs, this hearth
littered with shipping boxes
and masks.  Look, it isn’t enough 
to say, You were warned.
But you were. Yet here you are, 
in my fireplace, with another 
bad offering. I rule
over feasting, the intact 
household, the state, and
its buildings. What is it
you think a supplication to me
will achieve? What do
you expect for me to do?
Even I have hit pause
on my desmense,
sitting alone with my snacks,
shooing away the would-be
architects of demise. Fine, fine, 
I’ll do something, but it
won’t be what you want.
Don’t look to me to make
the miracle of social distance
go away, for your life
to return to what you once
thought was normal. 
When I wash my hands
free of chip crumbs,
I intend to show you
how to bake your own 
bread, how to dig
a garden, how to sew,
how to build a new domestic
to stretch long, and open and flat, 
so you can still see the sky,
so you remember the goddess
you beg for relief is also
the goddess of welcome.
My temples always public, 
My flames ready to warm all, 
make new households, new rules.

Split This Rock · Katherine Anderson Howell Hestia Vs The Pandemic Audio

Listen as Katherine Anderson Howell reads “Hestia Vs. The Pandemic.”

Poems of Persistence, Solidarity, and Refuge – Stewart Shaw

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.

***

Jumpin' for joy
By Stewart Shaw

If only He could

jump

UP, jump the imposed

Bail for living while black             jump the gap between

Home and WTF, jump

jump bad,                jump

back home, jump

Back into childhood---

The cow jumped over the moon the little

Boy laughed

If only He could                jump

Rope, into a mother’s

Arms,    jump so quick

Nothing could penetrate.  He needs to get

A jump on, get the jump on, be

One jump ahead. If only

He hadn’t gotten                           jumped

On his way to tomorrow. We will 

Listen to hear him           JUMP

The broom- in our dreams

We know his jumping

Is magic

Jump up and down, for joy.  If 

Only He would have

Jumped sooner.  Blk boys

Who have not learned to JUMP

Like frogs :: crickets in the thickets,

Jump between the lines

Single or double dutch 

Get jumped and dumped

Into graves

Shallow enough to let

Memory seep out

Jumping up to splash

Our dreams

While jumping

Over the sky      blk

Boys are often mistaken

For vultures.  Shot 

on sight

Split This Rock · Jumpin' For Joy Stewart Shaw

Listen as Stewart Shaw reads “Jumpin' for joy.”