Call for Poems of Persistence, Solidarity, and Refuge

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 this unprecedented global crisis, we turn to poetry to share truths that unearth its underlying causes, impact, and insistence for genuine 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 marginalized people at greater risk are not new. Today all the world experiences the vulnerability of these unrelenting issues and a heightened awareness to how our very survival depends on one another. 

Poetry cannot solve our present challenges, but it can help keep the flame of resilience, solidarity, and resistance alive in us. It can help us process and move through grief, anger, loneliness. It can be comfort when the most necessary action is to rest and recover. It can remind us what’s at stake, that our lives and legacy are worth the fight. All things begin in the imagination and poetry gives us a tool to paint the way forward, the reasons not to return to what does not honor and protect all lives. 

We offer this Virtual Open Mic as a well from which to draw replenishing water. We invite you to pour into this communal resource. Send us your poems of affirmation, protest, and witness. Give us the words you chant to get out of bed, to raise your fist, to encourage your kin, that will remind us, as this crisis does, that “we are our each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.” 

Guidelines

• Poems will be accepted until May 15, 2020. We invite one poem per person.
• Poems will be published on a rolling basis to Split This Rock’s blog, Blog This Rock (blogthisrock.blogspot.com), to create a Virtual Open Mic.
• We welcome poems new and old, whether previously published or not.
• Thematically, the call is wide open. We welcome: resistance, mourning, rage, solidarity, celebration, love. We especially welcome poems of witness and challenge by people experiencing an elevated level of risk in this crisis, such as disabled, sick, D/deaf, Brown, Black, Asian, Indigenous, queer/trans, and poor people. Religious and spiritual content is allowed, but please: no religious proselytizing.
• While we appreciate all poetic forms, Split This Rock's blog is not compatible with poems with complex or experimental formatting. Please choose your submission with this in mind. Should we find that your poem can not be properly posted, we will be in touch to request a different poem.
• Submissions to the Virtual Open Mic that have not yet been published as text online may also be considered for Split This Rock's Poem of the Week Series. We will contact you directly if we identify your poem as one we’d like to include as a Poem of the Week.

Submitted poems will be posted at Split This Rock’s blog, pending review for harmful content. Content that might be considered harmful includes poems with language, themes, and metaphors that:

• target marginalized groups, such as (but not limited to) D/deaf, disabled, and sick people; people of color, Indigenous people, women, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans people; people discriminated against for being from other countries, Muslim people, religious minorities, poor people, incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, etc.
• include slurs used to refer to groups to which the author does not belong
• uses people’s lived experiences, such as illness and disability, as pejorative metaphors (Ex: “blind to the fact,” “deaf to the truth”) 
• appropriate the experiences or cultures of identities the poet does not hold
• call for violence against vulnerable people or groups

How to Submit Your Poem

Online: Send us your poem via the online Submission Form by May 15, 2020.

If the form is not accessible to you: 

• Send your poem as an email attachment (.doc or .docx only) with the subject line “Virtual Open Mic Poem-[Your Name]” to submissions@splitthisrock.org. 
• Please include the following in the body of your email: the poem's title, your name and email address, and, if the poem has been previously published online or in print, include  publication information (publication name, press name, if applicable, and year of publication). Additionally, we ask that you review the statement below and confirm your agreement with it by including this  statement in the body of your email: "I confirm originality of [YOUR POEM TITLE]."
  Confirmation of Originality Statement: Author warrants that all material submitted to Split This Rock for the Virtual Open Mic originated with the author and were created by the author except where otherwise credited. Author agrees to indemnify and hold harmless Split This Rock from any and all claims, damages, and expenses which may arise for alleged breach of author warranties associated with material to be published. The Author warrants and represents they are the sole owner of the copyright to the poem submitted for publication and have full power and authority to grant Split This Rock with the rights herein provided for.

• For greater accessibility, please include an audio recording of your poem with your emailed submission titled with this format: [Your Name]_[Title of Poem]_Audio. Be sure to check the recording’s sound quality and consistency with the written text before you send it. To record your poem, use your cell phone, tablet, or computer to make an MP3 or MP4 file. Make your recording in a quiet place, speaking clearly and at an understandable pace. Please be sure to read the poem as it is written. Follow this script to begin your recording: “This is [Your Name] reading [Title of Your Poem] for Split This Rock.” After that, if the poem has an epigraph, state “This poem has an epigraph that reads” and read the epigraph. Then repeat the poem’s title and read the poem.

Questions

Send questions to info@splitthisrock.org.

Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience – Julie Carr

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. 

***

A fourteen-line poem on healing

by Julie Carr

1. They abused the powdery line
2. and collapsed phantom scaffolding
3. between what we wanted and
4. what we feared
5. Where have you gone in your
6. red dress?
7. Your benign limbs, at once
8. blessed and beautiful
9. Naked as a word
10. you have done nothing worng
11. I cannot freeze sound
12. The body’s erotic intelligence
13. is all that there is
14. and is given 

Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience – Nancy Boutilier

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. 

***

Unaugural Poem #1: UNPRESIDENTED

by Nancy Boutilier

I have been unpresidented.

In exchange for a man of vision


and generosity


of good humor and inclusivity,


I am handed 


a man of carelessness


and ego


of cruel playground humor


and ego


of duplicity and studied lies


and unleashed ego


who rates


no inauguration


that I will witness 


and so I dedicate myself to his 


Unauguration 


declare myself an Unaugural poet


and I will witness


for now


for the future


four years

Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience – Lynne Eve Grossman

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. 

***

I am a Palette

By Lynne Eve Grossman

Sometimes, I paint my coagulated

Life glue into

shy-knee lack-her

blobbing recycled

soul fragments

frenetic collages of release

splattering that canvas of my mind and

heart

blasts of energy

a vibrant, nonverbal voice

S T R E T C H I N G beyond the copper moon

in search of solution less answers

vibrations of my soul

creating musical vision

with no orch-castration

later, out of my studio

I often ponder

How many brushstrokes?

How many globs of paint?

How many assemblages?

pushed into those mocking

paint-mouthed canvas lips?

how many colors to Mute

burnt orange blood

of yesterdays?

How many swirls to

cement

those gangrene shadows?

I AM a palette

electric Freedom

rushing through me

with Each stroke of paint

breathing and surging

with passion-ART power

that Sir-cut won’t break me

creative jolts

jumpstart energetic re-lease

I DRAW lines UN-bounded

I PAINT shapes Un-censored

I AM a palette

Re-creating Life’s rainbows with

Multi-Colored Hope.

Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience – Pushpa Naidu Parekh

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. 

***

Language of Resistance

by Pushpa Naidu Parekh

When I let the breeze 

dry my words on paper

I enter language

I rope it around my tongue

savor its tartness

its ribbed edges

its slang of desire

its threshold of pain

Today poets silenced

deported from language

refuse the fragility of silence

its cold torpor

and complicities

When storms rage

shredding my words...

The poet in me

creates a refuge

A language of resistance

Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience – Aimee Suzara

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. 

***

Because Water is Life

By Aimee Suzara

Originally written 10/29/16, in solidarity with the Sioux People and Water Protectors at Standing Rock working to stop the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, inspired by Craig Santos Perez’ poem “Water is Life”

Once upon a time my ancestors lived beside the water

Fishing, capturing crabs from the sea, the fine sand mingled with sweat on their skin

And when I return to water the parts of mine recognize their source

Because water is life

Because water is life I honor the dagat and all of its fishes

And when I look at the ocean I am dreaming my origins

Because the Philippines is an archipelago

And every land is an island, bigger or smaller

Because no land is really dominant or superior or main

Because water is the ilog that rushes

And even when we dam rivers they rise up in a storm

Because water was our first home inside the womb

And water was the first sound we heard when we floated

And water was natural when we learned how to breathe

So as babies we remember how to swim

Because water is the condensation of rain and rain

Is the consequence of water, and we forget then that we end

Where we begin

Because in that forgetting we become like machines and try

To extract another liquid, oil, which helps us fuel other machines

To be bigger, faster and stronger

But we can’t drink oil though we act like we can

But oil kills the water, so our dependence on oil is a killing of water

Because the Sioux and the Water Protectors are guarding the water

In order to stop Oil from being transported by machines

And destroying the river and sacred places

Because the Dakota Access Pipeline is disturbing the dead

And disturbing the living for 7 Generations

Because the police have become like machines

Bearing militarized vehicles and pepper spray

And Water Protectors bear blankets and feathers and prayers

Because the police wear riot gear

And say the protestors are rioting

Because grandmothers and children and horses stand

As they have for centuries to guard the land

Because this very much reminds us of earlier treaties broken

Because this very much reminds us of how the United States was founded

Upon the burial grounds and sacred sites of Native and Indigenous people everywhere

Upon the dead with no respect for the living

Threatening the living with no respect for the dead

Because this is what the United States stands for

Harbingers of death, not protectors of life

Because water is life and life is our birthright

Because this very much reminds me of the colonizing of my people

Because water was used by this government as water torture

Because water was used by this government as an image of civilizing the savage

Because water is the metaphor for washing the culture from our brains

Because water was the gift of our islands and then you took us

Because you saw the water not as life but as passageway for machines,

And guns and ships, and Pacific military bases

Because you did that too in Guam and Hawaii

Because you showed no remorse for those you killed when we fought for independence

Because you used water not for life but for transporting bodies

To provide labor for your machines to serve your dominance

Because water became a graveyard of bodies, a passage of bones

Because you have turned water into a tool of death

But water is life and you need it to live

Must we remind you, over again?

That water is life, and water is life

Because water is life.

Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience – Dani Miller

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. 

***

Tired

By Dani Miller

I'm tired of writing poems about oppression.

I'm probably just as tired of writing them as you are of hearing them.

I'm tired of bleeding for the paper.

I'm tired of bleeding for those who have no more blood left to lose

I'm tired of writing poems about oppression.

I'm tired of finding the most eloquent way to comprehend this cruelty.

To glorify their deaths.

There is nothing about this struggle that is poetic.

So why do people still tell me that my poetry is beautiful?

My poetry is hardly beautiful.

It is hardly poetic.

I'm tired of being poetic.

There is no metaphor I could write that could make a Museum of their bodies.

Of our bodies.

No simile could slide America out of our choices.

No score is high enough to bring back our boys.

Sometimes, I'm angry as fuck.

And I just want to scream.

And curse.

And stick my middle finger up to the world

and not be eloquent.

And I'm tired of taking that and transforming it into beautiful

Into 3 minutes.

Into the fascinating plight of a struggling artist.

I'm tired of writing about oppression.

I'm tired of spilling myself into these words

only for nothing to change.

Only for us to be in the same place next month.

Next week

Tomorrow.

I'm tired of unity.

I'm tired of politicians who say unity is the best option.

Who say he's our president so we should give him a chance.

As if he hasn't had his chance for a year and a half

As if over the course of American history, people like him have ever given us one.

I'm tired of respectability politics

and of people who tell us to hug our oppressors.

as if peace is the same thing as justice.

as if patriarchy doesn't objectify the passive girls too.

as if Martin Luther King didn't die the same way that Malcom X did.

I'm tired of of conversation.

And I'm especially tired of people mistaking conversation for progression.

We've been having this conversation for centuries.

This is not new. And

It sure as hell isn't progressive.

Rather it's the opposite, it's static.

What good is conversation if we all just stop there.

Because conversation may be the first step in abolishing the oppressive institutions our country is built on

but it is time for us to move on to the next step.

I am tired of seeing those goddamn safety pins.

I’m tired of white feminism

And white women who voted for trump

53 percent of y'all.

I'm tired of feminism that isn't intersectional

We preach sisterhood but then turn our backs on LGBT women, Muslim women and women of color when they need us most.

We Put the weight of our struggle on their shoulders

but when they need our support we disappear.

Emphasize our whiteness over our women.

And you know what,

I'm tired of writing poems about oppression.

Probably just as tired as you are of hearing them

But we both aren't as tired

as the mothers who are forced to

 mourn their children's name

before they can learn to cherish it.

As the woman who are forced to let politicians make decisions about their bodies.

As 10 year olds who think skinny is a compliment.

As survivors of rape who are gaslighted into believing his choices were their faults.

As residents of flint who are still being poisoned

As low income families who won't be able to afford health insurance

As Muslim citizens who are called terrorists

As refugees who continue to fight for their lives and their families with no support from America

As anyone who are told they don't belong here because of their race, nationality and religion.

As the people in the street who are protesting for their humanity

I'm tired of writing poems about oppression.

And that is why I keep writing them.

Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience – Laura Solomon

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. 

***

On Questions and Capes: A poem about survival

By Laura Solomon

The cashier at the pharmacy verifies my name, address, date of birth,

looks me over and repeats my last name asking, "Huh.

That Jewish?"

It is 3 weeks after the election.  We are standing in a

Walgreens in a blue state across the

corner from where the high school kids stood on

election day holding signs reading,

"build that wall" and "Hillary for Prison." We are

down the road from the Starbucks where I was lectured on

how young people like myself will be the

downfall of society and

up the street from the house with the Confederate flag painted in its garage, from the

Trump sign that lights up in the dark, from the

pick-up truck with two Confederate flags flying off the back above the gun rack, from the

Safeway where men followed me to my car, tried to get in after me, where I

did not buy from the Kosher for Passover section because

a man in a Trump hat was in the aisle with me spouting ignorance and yet I

wonder

why my mouth goes dry as I

stand in Walgreens

trying to answer this question.

*****

Hey Doctor?

If Donald Trump is president, will he hate me?

But Doctor,

when Donald Trump runs the world, will he make people be cannibals?

Will they eat people with autism first?

Doctor,

Is it okay to worry about Donald Trump?

Sometimes I can't sleep because I worry about him, like, about what he might do to my family.

But, Doctor,

Will it be the end of the world when Donald Trump is president?  

Doctor --

Can I be a superhero and save the world from Donald Trump?  Sometimes I imagine that.

Doctor -

I don't know how to be a superhero. 

I tried to fly once, but

I just falled down.

*****

Each session feels like a Bingo card of heartbreak:

a unique pattern of life on the margins,

I find newfound fear as the day's

headlines flash by.

Session 1:

White single father with mental illness raising

teenage son with disabilities has to give up

a day of work to wait

for Medical Assistance transportation.

Session 2:

Muslim woman in hijab has twins with autism, works

nights to support them, about to lose her job due to

inability to find child care. 

Session 3:

Non-English speaking, immigrant mother with

intellectual disability raising child with autism.

Session 4:

Black lesbian grandmothers, one with cancer, one an immigrant, raising

child with multiple disabilities on

food stamps in section 8 housing with a history of

multigenerational trauma.

Bingo.

*****

I find an unleashed

ferocity inside me.

People says we should just

pray, there is

nothing we can do--

I say:

"Fuck your prayers.

Now is the time to fight for the superheroes trying to

fly

across the margins."

*****
I feel so small in the face of the

resilience I sit across from.

What privilege it is to feel

shell-shocked and

curl into my

white, lesbian, half-Jewish shell when all day I

sit with people who only had a quarter shell to start with and it

leaks when it rains.

*****

Doctor?

I was teaching my son to ride the bus.

He was going to do it himself.

Should I let him?  I'm scared.

Doctor,

I want him to be able to work

but I don't know what people will say.

Have you seen all these hate crimes?

But Doctor,

he runs away from me in public.

He hugs strangers, he's

a grown man now.

A 14-year-old black boy.

What do we do?

Doctor?

****

I spend days telling myself I

cannot do this.

I cannot find

my breath.

I spend my days giving everyone

capes so they are

flying as I

attempt to ask the questions that will

imagine our survival.