the valley of its making by Nate Marshall
poetry makes nothing happen
—W. H. Auden
the people in the streets
are plucked up like
radishes from dark earth,
heads beat the purplish-red
of ripeness. the women lead
the stupid & brutish to a
future they don’t deserve.
the organized are still
unbearably human, they
still fuck & hurt & harm
& are not actually sorry.
the people still fight
each other too much &
the system not enough
& too often it is not a fight
but a bullet. too many men
want to be in the front
& don’t want to march
anywhere in particular.
some of us have degrees
& noses to look down.
so many want a version
of old days that never
existed. many are still unwilling
to grow a vocabulary for personhood,
even from the words already in them.
so many will deny they to a sibling
simply because. our people are
messy & messed up & a mess.
nothing about our people is romantic
& it shouldn’t be. our people deserve
poetry without meter. we deserve our
own jagged rhythm & our own uneven
walk toward sun. you make happening happen.
we happen to love. this is our greatest action.
Art by Jonelle Summerfield
Recommended listening: Caller No.99 - Chris Cohen Harmless Melodies - Yellow Days
Links of the Day: A Eulogy for Crayola’s Dandelion + Hallith Bates' newsletter Pen Parade where the illustrator handdraws her review with the pen she's reviewing F*** For Forest The Art and Attitude of Nawazuddin Siddiqui