This is the year that squatters evict landlords,
gazing like admirals from the rail
of the roofdeck
or levitating hands in praise
of steam in the shower;
this is the year
that shawled refugees deport judges
who stare at the floor
and their swollen feet
as files are stamped
with their destination;
this is the year that police revolvers,
stove-hot, blister the fingers
of raging cops,
and nightsticks splinter
in their palms;
this is the year
that darkskinned men
lynched a century ago
return to sip coffee quietly
with the apologizing descendants
of their executioners.
This is the year that those
who swim the border’s undertow
and shiver in boxcars
are greeted with trumpets and drums
at the first railroad crossing
on the other side;
this is the year that the hands
pulling tomatoes from the vine
uproot the deed to the earth that sprouts the vine,
the hands canning tomatoes
are named in the will
that owns the bedlam of the cannery;
this is the year that the eyes
stinging from the poison that purifies toilets
awaken at last to the sight
of a rooster-loud hillside,
pilgrimage of immigrant birth;
this is the year that cockroaches
become extinct, that no doctor
finds a roach embedded
in the ear of an infant;
this is the year that the food stamps
of adolescent mothers
are auctioned like gold doubloons,
and no coin is given to buy machetes
for the next bouquet of severed heads
in coffee plantation country.
If the abolition of slave-manacles
began as a vision of hands without manacles,
then this is the year;
if the shutdown of extermination camps
began as imagination of a land
without barbed wire or the crematorium,
then this is the year;
if every rebellion begins with the idea
that conquerors on horseback
are not many-legged gods, that they too drown
if plunged in the river,
then this is the year.
So may every humiliated mouth,
teeth like desecrated headstones,
fill with the angels of bread.
sometimes I just lie alone in my room in the dark because it’s nice to feel invisible sometimes sometimes I wish I could really be invisible for a little while not gone I don’t think but just invisible I wish I could be in my bed under blankets that weigh enough to feel like they’re holding my body together holding my ribs together like they’re all the parts of an elastic band or a bandage or one of those giant hammock cranes they use to move beached whales I’m not sure if they’re bringing me back to the ocean or taking me somewhere to be buried somewhere where I can’t stink up the beach it’s not really the smell that bothers people it’s the reminder that their bodies are only as far away from death as my nail bed is to your fingertip if my hand were to slip in that moment something is always broken we move the body away so we don’t have to see ourselves in the wide back arching like St. Louis’ gates like seven bridges that we may or may not be on some days I wake up thinking it might be as magic as Hogwarts’ staircases some days I wake up thinking I’ve ruined my chances instead of my thumb I stuck my middle finger straight up between the cracks of the Wailing Wall I told you about all the things I would knock down did you ever wonder how many walls there were did you ever count your bridges or will that happen only in the final moments would you move the body? I need the dark to hold my ribs together sometimes the flat plate bone that covers my heart finishes in between my ribs in the shape of a crescent moon I can’t begin to tell you all the things I would like to draw in the empty spaces if we watch the moon backwards in time or forward with a different beginning it is decaying instead of blooming I’m not sure that that’s any less beautiful what if we could watch our lives backward or forward with a different beginning would they be decaying or blooming would my middle finger be useless would his thumb welcome the flood like fingers in all the right places would anything have been more intimate which way would the bridges go would its skin reflect the soft wet swoon of its insides instead of its vultures peering faces its own death instead of the rigid fear in our own eyes we do not like to admit to ourselves sometimes why we are mourning why we feel the stench like smoke in our lungs like matches barricading our lips like scorpions licking the backs of our throats we ask them to take the body away what if the boy who will bring the flood is trapped inside what if our ribs fall apart what if we never found beauty between the cracked open wet pink lips of sin skin sometimes I need to lie alone in the dark and put weight on my skin so it feels like enough to hold my ribs together to hold my insides together sometimes I lie alone in the dark and pretend it is the belly of a whale so I know why I’m mourning so I know what to build and also what to destroy eyes closed weight in the dark is like the humid cavern the body of a whale suspended in water the day before you were born her back arched there are no ribs there is space for a million bridges
pretty apt description of my life right now. judaism ≠ zionism. i am jewish and anti-zionist and pro-palestinian, because i believe in peace and justice and human dignity.
It is time for us to lift up our communities and demand better working conditions for WalMart employees. Support the Black Friday strikes, coming to your area. From Ohio to California and Alabama to Montana, our collective voices will be heard.
sign a petition attend a strike get involved! http://www.respectdc.org/
(via anarcho-queer)
I wish I could tell you
come inside
sit down
take off the jacket you’re wearing or maybe the one you wore yesterday when it rained
Your mother would tell you to sit up straighter
Here are the questions I would ask:
Do you regret anything
Do you wake up when the sun rises or when your eyes open
When you pour milk into your coffee do you think of a mushroom cloud
How many landmines
How many footsteps
How many logs
Who told you you discovered anything
Where were you really
What does dying feel like
What does living feel like
How many times has that tree fallen down and
How many years does it take to grow a beard like that and
What is the point of carrying a big stick if the point is not to break open crystals prisms see every color bleed red blood
And
Why don’t you take off your jacket?
Oh no I’m fine you’ll say
just fine
