so I took a fairly long ride with a poet last night. this is what came of that. and comments are welcome!

invoking Audre

this voice is not a bird. does not flutter
in the throat or threaten to flee
/ is not loose like the body, like muscle
or cellulite, shifting / is stone
somehow, maybe the only thing
that lasts

~

I'm told we don't need any more poems
about women and their bodies. the man
who says this has had many small cancers
scraped from his face. I forgive him,
and think about you in that airport, a big woman
taking up space.

~

this voice is a lost hymn to a heretic goddess
the last wish of a half-hanged witch

this voice is not a gift taken back
by an angry father, not your freedom song

~

the man who says this is white, and straight,
and too intelligent for his education.
I wish you into the back seat, I turn the radio down.

he says it is the death of art.

~

I speak for the girl who knows which way
to turn the razor at a wrist

I speak for the boy stealing his mother's lipstick

this is not your freedom song

~

I don't know how to explain what it is to know
you were not meant to survive, and have. I think
I would press the excised skin between glass,
hang it over the sink. I say, there are no
new stories. certain words in certain order
keep us alive.

~

this is Alice Paul's hunger strike
Harriet Tubman's first run
and a grandmother explaining the physics
of momentum on a screened-in front porch

~

I say, if you can write a poem about a mailman
or a cactus that will save my life, then do it. meanwhile
homophobia. the hypersexualized body. racism, rape.
government, destruction, love.

the poem about the hobo is cute. I wish I could play
the harmonica.

~

this is Janis Joplin's caterwaul
Bell Hook's lost diary
and Eve's hand on the apple

not your freedom song
not your freedom song
not your freedom song

but a mouth broken open
so you may speak.

*****

notes:

Harold Bloom called slam poetry “the death of art.”
“we were never meant to survive” is from a poem by Audre Lorde.