Marjorie Moorhead
Set You Free
Clave! tap-tap-tap, tap-tap
tap-tap-tap-, tap-tap!
In 1984, we listen happily.
You tell me of salsa’s rhythm; Willie Colón, Celia Cruz
Rubén Blades y Seis Del Solar on cassette:
“Y a nosotros nos toca, hoy, ponerte en libertad”
tap-tap-tap, tap-tap!
How is it, now that you are free?
Abiding pain in your soul and heart
only chemically constructed euphoria
would imperfectly soothe.
Como está? now at rest from battle,
fought so valiantly with sword of pen or brush.
Your canvas leaning forever idle against a wall,
drawing book closed.
tap-tap-tap, tap-tap!
How is it, now that you don’t have to see?
Things you saw so clearly through to their essence:
inequity
unrequited beauty
How does it feel, now that you can float above
let others do the work of coping,
resisting,
creating anew?
tap-tap-tap, tap-tap!
tap-tap-tap, tap-tap! Buscando América
“And it’s our turn today to set you free”
for Jorge Soto Sanchez
Marjorie Moorhead is a poet and survivor. Her poems have appeared in What Rough Beast, HIV Here & Now, and Rising Phoenix Review, as well as in the anthologies A Change of Climate (Independently published, 2017), edited by Sam Illingworth and Dan Simpson; and Birchsong: Poems Centered in Vermont Volume II (The Blueline Press, 2018), edited by Alice Wolf Gilborn, Rob Hunter, Carol Cone, Brenda Nicholson, and Monica Stillman. Her work will appear in the Opening Windows Fourth Friday Poets collection, forthcoming from Hobblebush Press in 2018. Moorhead lives in New Hampshire near the Vermont border.
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Here is today’s prompt
(optional as always)
Today’s poem uses the figure of speech known as apostrophe, in which the writer or speaker speaks directly to someone who is absent or dead. Write a poem addressed directly to a person who is living with HIV or who died of AIDS. It can be a celebrity you admire (or admired) or a person you know (or knew) personally.