Poems of Persistence, Solidarity, and Refuge – Jen Martin

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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To talk to you
by Jen Martin

How are you?
Question beckoning a barrage 
Is soft, swift, sequence
what you want to hear?
 
How are you today?
Living breathing
I was told this was the way to ask people who don’t have that sense of week, month, sunrise
catch up
sequence.
 
Are you in sequence?
Do your words line up orderly 
today?
you are off the hook
because
 
Today, yesterlate, undersunday
Upintomorrow, latemorn, latetimecontinue, 
That’s your right.
 
Here when you are
Gone when you’re gone
In out of step we fall in step.

Split This Rock · Jen Martin To talk to you Audio

Listen as Jen Martin reads "To talk to you."