Devon Balwit
Visiting Planet Earth
O I shouldn’t put my finger in that
Auntie, it might bite!
—Sylvia Plath
O I shouldn’t turn on the telly,
not if I were you,
too many mudslides, weepy men
with buried families,
the burned out, the flooded, with
their insides on display,
ladies draped over long coffins,
with balled hankies.
O not the laptop either, dear—
there, you’ll only see
dogs without ears and ribby mares,
bear cubs grabbing
the knees of their jailors, unhappy
hominids hooting
into echo chambers. O not the yard
either, my bean,
the haze is thick today, no breeze,
no butterflies, no songbirds,
not this year, just scavengers,
fighting for scraps.
Devon Balwit is a writer/teacher from Portland, Oregon. Her poems of protest have appeared previously in What Rough Beast as well as in The New Verse News, Poets Reading the News, Rattle, Redbird Weekly Reads, Rise-Up Review, Rat’s Ass Review, The Rising Phoenix Review, Mobius, and more.
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