Poems of Persistence, Solidarity, and Refuge – Rita Pellegrini

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.

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Hit and Run
By Rita Pellegrini

Once you tried making yours the soil 

we were born into.

To plant plastic red flowers 

where our yellow trumpet trees bloomed.

You took our books, filled them

with your vernacular of fear. 

You changed the syntax

of our present. Our future,

captured in a souvenir snowglobe

you used as a paperweight.

One day, you got tired of weeding our hope 

that grew under each moon.

So you went back home to tend

to the rhododendrons in your manicured lawn.

Purple hydrangeas you cut to fit perfectly

in the wide-mouth vase on your dining room table.

As for us, we became archeologists

of dreams. Digging bones 

from stone walls.

Split This Rock · Rita Pellegrini Hit And Run Audio

Listen as Rita Pellegrini reads "Hit and Run."