Susan Brennan
Education for Girls
the girls are being taken
from school desks
their lives soldering
to an old violence
swallowed and paid for
the fathers—out of their minds
walk nightly tremors
stones are thrown
mothers drape the earth
the daughters still gone
the gift of being a girl
of being threaded to mother blood
of leaving
trails of hair
long and lost
presidents keep speaking
as if her lips aren’t being broken
or as if they really can’t hear
the hot death worm
beneath words clicking facts
they are science geeks
they are building robots
they are in the coding and math club
they walked to school that morning
by dusk, their pencils, flip flops marooned in the dirt
tonight I’m shaking
I know tomorrow they will still be gone
I don’t expect men in power
to change the skin of things
but what of me
Susan Brennan is the author of the collections Blue Sirens (Dancing Girl Press), numinous, (Finishing Line Press), and Drunken Oasis (Rattapallax Press). She curated poetry programming (WanderWord) at Wilco’s Solid Sound Music Festival at MASS MoCA. With a circus arts company, she staged her poem Chromoluminarism about Georges Seurat’s final painting (RGB NYC). A screenwriter and activist as well as a poet, she has written film scripts and a 1-million-hit-plus award winning web-series, pitched film stories, and produced a short film, premiering at Austin, Venice and Tribeca Film Festivals. See what she’s up to at tinycubesofice.com.
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