Arielle Greenberg
Untitled
while the news / came I sat in a wooden A-frame / by a creek
with my friends in their bodies / black man / trans man / black queer woman /
bodies blood-smeared by the president / -elect / to mark a coming / smiting
and we wept / I apologized / wept the bullshit useless tears of a white woman but /
I meant them / meant by them I will do the work/ and when they come for you /
I will not be silent / will put my body as a shield in front of yours
and thought about how literally I might do this
(it was most like when my baby died / that sense of loss /)
and walking back in the starflung / I spoke apologies to the furious bird
who has been screaming all week
I am sorry I know I know I am sorry I said to the species
thinking of Standing Rock / then stood in more circles of bodies
then lay in bed and strategized about revolution
o fire-leveled mountain morning of noticing
in which a kind of winning, kind of conceding
has taken out my breakfast / my breath / my belief in self-evident truths
On the 78th Anniversary of Kristallnacht
Arielle Greenberg‘s most recent books are Locally Made Panties, a collection of micro-essays, and Slice, a collection of poems. She lives in Maine and teaches in the community and in the MFA at Oregon State University-Cascades.
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