Poems of Persistence, Solidarity, and Refuge – Aimee Suzara

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.

***

We come swimming

By Aimee Suzara

A trilingual poem born in Havana, Cuba

“From a port of this island, about seventy canoes came out, each containing three men, or thereabout, while some came swimming and others on logs…They had fine teeth, eyes, mouth, hands and feet, and beautiful long flowing hair, while many of them were very fair.  Very handsome youths were to be seen among them; all were naked and covered no part…indeed, for a barbarous people, naked and of so little reason, one could not restrain himself, at the sight of them, from thanking God for having created them.” (17th century from Antonio de Morga’s History of the Philippine Islands)

We come in boats
Or we come swimming
We come in boats
Or we come swimming
We come in boats
Or we come swimming                              bangka, take me home

 

We were born with fins                              we come swimming
We were born with gills                             we come swimming
Ipinanganak namin                                   sa ilalalim ng dagat
                                                                        bangka, take me home

 

Nacimos con aletas                                     nadando
Nacimos con branquias                             nadando
Ipinanganak namin                                   sa ilalim ng dagat
                                                                        bangka, take me home

 

Venimos en botes
O nadando
Venimos en barcos
O nadando
En nuestros cuerpos
Nadando                                                     bangka, take me home

 

Venimos en botes
Y viviendo
Venimos en barcos
Y viviendo
En nuestros cuerpos
Viviendo

                                                                     bangka, balikan tayo
                                                                     balikan tayo al mar profundo
                                                                     regresemos al mar
                                                                      Sa ilalim ng dagat

bangka, take me home

Split This Rock · "We come swimming" by Aimee Suzara

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Poems of Persistence, Solidarity, and Refuge – Jen Karetnick

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.

***

23andMe Says My Body Is a Sanctuary City
By Jen Karetnick

for the Basque and the Romani

for Ötzi the Iceman, chipped out of the Alps

for 1,600,000 Ashkenazi Jews, one finger on the founding hand, 

descendants from the 6,000,000, strained out like tea leaves

for the 19 percent of Ashkenazi with trace elements from Poland

for those who tunneled from Poland to Austria, rabbits barely ahead

of dachshunds

for my great-grandmother who drove her children to the coast in 

a covered wagon

for her husband’s mother, who gave her offspring in the Ukraine 

to a woman with another name

for those more likely to birth babies with hair as fine as sand, 

covering the fontanel’s potential sinkhole

for those more likely to sneeze come the spike of light—but 

HaWaYaH (yehi ‘or)

for those more able to detect the presence of asparagus, processed in

urine or semen after steaming under kosher salt on a Friday night when the sun covers its head

for those whose tastes divide along the roots of the bitter

whose preferences for salty and sweet are as even as 

the temperament of dust sifting down from the most 

ancient bricks in the wall

whose earwax is mud

whose ring fingers are longer than subversive curses

whose dimples are flattened bullets shot into ghetto walls

who have little opportunity for the slug of a single eyebrow 

and only the third of a chance at widows’ peaks

who have better prospects at being made into widows on refugee 

boats that have been returned to the wholesale of war, from

the cyclic pitch of death flights, in the in-flux policies in 

detention rooms at airports, where green cards change to red

who have the option of variant after variant after variant

16234 of them located on mtDNA k1a1b1a, a haplogroup

no longer featured in the skin tone of the face or differentiated in a city of dry-footed, sun-shaded exilios

who are detected more and more often in these rebel, migrant genes

Split This Rock · Jen Karetnick 23andMe Says My Body Is A Sanctuary City Audio

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Poems of Persistence, Solidarity, and Refuge – Janlori Goldman

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.

***

Where Should the Birds Fly After the Last Sky?

By Janlori Goldman

                        Mahmoud Darwish, 1941-2008

On the road to Nablus I think of you,
             your wrecked heart blooming

on rocky hills, a horse’s shadow alone
             in a field. Anemones spread

in resolute red— in warning or welcome
             it’s too early to say.

A candy store pocked with bullet holes
             churns with cement mixers,

makeshift machines coating almonds
             in sweet liquid. The shopkeeper says,

Taste this after all you see. In a season
             of unripe things, I bite into green almonds,

taxi to the mountain top to watch the village
             long in the valley. Gusts of pigeons

blow against stone— all I have been taught
             smacks against the rockface.

As a child in synagogue I fit a quarter
             into a cardboard slot to plant a tree

in Israel, millions of coins
             now tangled roots reaching

for each other in the underworld
             that knows nothing of walls.

Split This Rock · Janlori Goldman - Where Should The Birds Fly After The Last Sky.audio - Janlori Goldman

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Poems of Persistence, Solidarity, and Refuge – Lynne McEniry

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.

***

Four in the morning and I'm

By Lynne McEniry

in the bathroom worrying about a friend

with Covid and for distraction worming my way 

through a FB thread of a person I don’t know who

liked a comment I made on the post of someone

I only know on social media because I made

myself brave enough to reach out and ask

her to be my friend anyway 

and I’m reading the posts of this friend 

I barely know to try to stop worrying 

about the sick friend I know well and I’m clicking

on links of photos where this strange friend had dinner

last night and of the place her sister works and

the photos of her last vacation when I remember

the encyclopedia set my dad brought home one

night when someone had no cash to pay him

for painting their living room and he was damn

well pissed because he had planned to buy

a bag of groceries with food different from 

the cereal and powdered milk we’d been 

eating  all week      but as he turned to pick a 

volume up to probably crash it to the floor

he caught me flipping through one and pausing 

on a black and white of 

a sequoia with a man and a VW bug posed

in front of it for perspective  

and he was reminded in in my wide 

brown eyes, the innocent O of my lips 

that there was more than one way

to cure hunger and here on this

toilet at four in the morning I’m 

reminded there’s more than one way

to lose friends and gain friends

more than one way to worry more than one way

that someone hungry can turn to past 

volumes for answers        for healing

Split This Rock · Lynne McEniry Four in the morning and I'm Audio

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Poems of Persistence, Solidarity, and Refuge – M.F. Simone Roberts

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.

***

Dair & Cré-umha / Oak & Bronze*

By M.F. Simone Roberts

The plain truth is my shoulders

are almost numb with tension,

oakey, not in a whiskey way, 

but more the barrel holding, holding.

What I can’t do is hold my father

back from his ingrained pride,

gathering unmasked with friends

unprotected. While they love

my father, this malady is a mebd.

Did they hug hello?

Did the couple from the condo

building -- all those public

surfaces -- wash the hands

that held one curve of a bowl

as my father the other? 

This pandemic is a context

masked in granular confusion:

we’ve all been tested, it’s 

safe to share féasta, gather in 

close for comfort, right?

Which headline? What day?

My father’s hugs are healing, even

over video chat, solid as an oak, as heavy, 

completely surrounding. My six oaks, 

though they whisper their waking each

Imbloc, can’t hold me. One, a red oak, fell

from wind just at Beltane. Our ancestors stilled

uicsce beatha from wheat, rye, barley, into oak 

barrels and made them bronze. Whiskey was a ward, 

sláinte, water of life, then illness, eventually a weapon,
a bright and murderous alloy.

Comorbidities include: heart conditions. 

His heart beat a relaxed 70 in the ventricles,

but a panicked 140 in the atria. Like most

hearts now, his can’t calibrate emotion.

He texted a pic of his latest last-whiskey 

after the latest defibulation. 

Comorbidities include: cancer. Radiation 

starts Monday. What day will his 

immune system confuse erythrocyte

for corona and then clot? He’s so slow

to humble, to just hold back a little.

People of oak and bronze are dare and careless. 

We see a fetch before a loved one falls.

The luck, the bounce back, the devil may care.

The speeds my parents drove, the races home from the bar,

the way my mother shone a Brigit victorious, 

bronze with sun-gleam even past my young bedtime. 

My shoulders kenning this tension,

anticipating mourning, as if steaming over a fire

of ambient grief and soon cured, bound 

round with metal, holding, holding, reticent, drained

and refilled, cooping up my breath.

Maybe that’s what barrels are,

just bounce and roll,

smash and spirit.

*From Irish Gaelic -- Dair : oak, Cré-umha : bronze, mebd : confusion/war goddess, féasta : feast, uicsce beatha : whiskey/water of life, sláinte : health.

Split This Rock · Simone Roberts Dair & Cré-umha Oak & Bronze Audio

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Poems of Persistence, Solidarity, and Refuge – Sunu Chandy

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.

***

First Quarantine Poem

By Sunu Chandy

1. How to Wash Your Hands

 

First, find a song. 

Then, double-check, how many seconds to scrub. 

Don’t forget underneath your fingernails. 

Don’t forget your wrists. Include your palms 

and each finger, one by one. 

Remember integrity. 

Repeat after the morning walk. 

Repeat after you pick up the mail. 

Repeat after you wash the produce. 

Repeat after you wash the milk carton. 

Repeat after you use the bathroom. 

Repeat after you get the week’s piano sheet 

music printed from the leasing office. 

Repeat after you take out the recycling. 

Repeat after you make lunch for the family. 

Repeat after you retrieve the package from the lockers. 

Repeat after you return from the building’s laundry room. 

Repeat before you start making dinner. 

Remember integrity. 

Remember what is at stake. 

Repeat after the morning walk. 

 

2. How to Avoid that Place called Panic 

 

First, find a song. 

The song is entitled: We have survived hard things before.  

The song is sub-titled: So many are suffering, and in worse ways. 

The chorus reminds you there is help out there, if it comes to that.

The chorus reminds you, you can still be 

helpful to others, even when you are worried. 

Remember integrity. 

Repeat after the morning walk. 

Repeat before you start the day’s work. 

Repeat after you teach your daughter the idea of decimals. 

Repeat after your spouse’s salary is cut 

to a fraction.  Repeat after you avoid your parents’ calls that week. 

Repeat after you teach your daughter about the Battle 

of Bunker Hill. And the Revolutionary, War. 

Repeat after you learn that your friend 

may be laid off.  Repeat after your office issues fact 

sheets on how this all impacts on women so much 

more. Repeat because it’s not an anecdote. 

Repeat because it’s not anecdotal. Repeat because 

it’s not hypothetical. Repeat after you press, 

okay, yes, I am still watching. It is 1a.m. I am still 

watching. Repeat when the four health aids’ 

livelihoods are in our hands. Repeat when our own 

health feels in the balance. 

Remember integrity. 

Remember what is at stake. 

Repeat after the morning walk.

Split This Rock · Sunu Chandy First Quarantine Poem Audio

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