Rachel Ida Buff
Prayer for the Outrage Machine
Outrage is my spine;
It pulls me upright in the morning, draws me to the keyboard,
Drives me into the streets.
I wake in the still hours;
Outrage is my companion.
For the empty classrooms
And those overfilled with children;
For double-dealing judges,
And the houseless man who got a $237 ticket
For living in the park down my street.
Outrage is my spine;
It lifts my head, opens my mouth
And I am talking, explaining, exhorting, declaiming. Reasoning:
to keep from screaming.
Outrage is my voice.
For the creatures that perish in wildfire;
All the people walking to the borders;
For those killed at prayer,
For guns, guns, guns, guns
Everywhere.
Outrage is my spine;
I breathe in and out, unfurling the column of bones.
I pray for the strength
To bend, to attend, to listen, to hear
the soft animal of soul as it curls around me.
Rachel Ida Buff is an immigration historian whose most recent academic book is Against the Deportation Terror: Organizing for Immigrant Rights in the Twentieth Century (Temple UP, 2017). She is also a novelist and writer of creative short prose. Her work has appeared in The Nation, Aeon, The Southern Review, The Minnesota Review, and Jewish Currents, among other journals.
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