99 Poems for the 99 Percent

The 99th Poem: Lycopodium Obscurum, Timothy Donnelly

2012-02-16T05:58:00.000-08:00

LYCOPODIUM OBSCURUM
Timothy Donnelly

If it’s true that a person has to become more than half-

dead to this world to live in it happily, then I’ll be happy

never to live in it happily again. Let the phenomena

alternately capsize and crank me up into the Atlantic

air—I will hang there jangling till the point of view

turns out to be borne on the concave back of some far

too faulty conception of happiness, which is to say just

say the word and I’ll tear it down and get back to work.

Here in my dirt laboratory, here where I take my time

and have it, what shatters on the workbench wends its way

to the floor in light-feathered sentences whose truth

content amounts to as much as the average rainfall

between syllables in silver. Sentences that chirp insights

back and forth nights like peckish metaphysicists

united over pastry, an altarpiece of it, baroque in an effort

to avoid further scrutiny of the universal diagram

for the formation of questions regarding every possible

proposition. Having only recently tattooed it to the taut

backs of truffle hogs we then released into the autumn

of their abutting acreage to no avail, I can’t fault them.

They can’t be faulted. Not entirely. Not when the need

to articulate their quest in material terms animates limbs

no less than hungers of the body. But something keeps

going wrong, something that calls for cold long walks

through quiet acreage. A chance to glimpse, as in time-

lapse photography, the pert tassels of what’s classified

as a fern-ally insist through the topsoil. I never knew

its binomial till long after the woods in which it grew

got axed to pay for my tutorials. Wee ranch-style houses

fortify that land now, habitats where lives like mine

go drab between lasagna and last month’s crossword puzzles.

Dust descends on candy dishes. Radon detectors blink

plainly in the basements. The sentences want to know

how much of what they perceive is actually a message.

Sorry. I stand corrected. What they really want to know

is how much of what they perceive is actually a pastry.

Pretty much all of it, I say. After so many failed strivings

into darkness, into ether, they’ve come to value most

what they can lay their hands on, place inside their mouth.

All that animus spent hunting the intrinsic instead of

honing methods to evaluate the relative wore them out.

Go to bed, little sentences. The ghosts of club moss rise

up because I’ve felt them here. I tend to them this way,

a member of their movement. And maybe what irrupts

calls for that. For less gridwork and more choreography,

for a form including time, change, and not just setting into

fixed position—although back in the day the sentences

would’ve wagered all dance had gridwork hidden in it.

Tonight I’ll board the ship with caution because it is too

dark now not to, hands on the rope rail, eyes on my feet up

the gangplank and back against the stars beneath which

happiness will be thought the motion of a mind whereby

a value is performed. Like a show of respect for the forest

that startles us into feeling at home being lost in it. Insofar as

this position can only be borne on the back of a somewhat

loose conception of feeling, I am starting a new way to feel.
___________________
About "Lycopodium Obscurum," Timothy Donnelly writes
“Lycopodium Obscurum” takes its name from an evergreen clubmoss that grew in abundance in the woods behind the house I grew up in in what was then a semi-rural suburb of Providence, RI. Commonly known as “ground pine” or “princess pine,” the plant resembles tiny, densely branched pine trees, and for this reason it featured prominently in the dioramas of my childhood imaginative play. In the late 80’s, these woods—which had once extended for acres, and which I remember as full of wild blueberry bushes, various pine, old oak, white birch, colonial stone walls, sassafras, occasional horseshoes and arrowheads, numerous types of fern and the wild orchids known lady slippers, too, and through which I could probably still find my way through today blindfolded, if they existed—were lost to suburban sprawl. I later found out that my parents had had to sell this land to pay for my college education. This poem was written as a refusal to let that sacrifice go uncommemorated, and in my insistence on preserving (in some form, in my poetry) articles of value and sources of happiness that our market-driven culture overlooks.

This poem first appeared in Washington Square Review, Winter/Spring 2011.

Self Portrait As Rejected Inaugural, Dean Rader

2012-02-15T06:56:00.001-08:00

SELF PORTRAIT AS REJECTED INAUGURAL

Dean Rader

The land was land before we were us.

Our regret, freshly cut, clumps in the front yard.

History, memory’s buttonhole, needs a new suit:

Its shoes, scuffed and spit-shined, wait by the door.

We wear ourselves as though it means something,

As if identity’s moustache and glasses were made

To order. We are who we show others we

Should be, at least this is what we told

Ourselves as we dragged our whiteness across

The plains. We are what God wants us to be,

At least, this is what God told us as we dragged

Our blackness along the field. We are what

Our treaties say we are, at least this is what

Our fathers told us as we dragged our redness

Into the forests. As we did that first day,

We walk out onto the yard in our bare feet.

Today, though, we keep the mower in the

Garage. It’s raining and it is going to rain.

Today, we wait for the sun, sky's

only coin, to drop itself into the slot

Of America's phone: we ask who might

Answer when the other millennium

Calls to check in. We reply as we did then:

Look in your window. We are whomever

We are when we answer that phone. We are

What we say into the silence on the other end.

We are, as we always have been, the little chain

That dangles from mercy's bulb. We are,

As we always will be, the bulb at the end

Of conquest's wire, at least that's what

The soldier told us as we touched the switch.

We are what we say we might be. We are

Neither invention nor anodyne. As we

Walk across the yard, we say to ourselves:

We are what God asked us to be,

But we know that's never been true.

We are who we ask to be us.

____________

About "Self Portrait as Rejected Inaugural," Dean Rader writes

I wrote this poem after President Obama was elected but before he was inaugurated. I was thinking about voting and democracy and representation and access to power. This poem and the 99 Percent movement share a desire to say who we are. Several people have chided me for not posting one of my own poems, so, on this second-to-the last day of this blog, I thought I should walk the walk and say something about who we all are.

White Phosphorus, Martha Zweig

2012-02-14T10:17:00.000-08:00

WHITE PHOSPHORUS

Martha Zweig

Gaza, 2008-2009

Today I shot all the fish in the barrel

dead then strafed an entire

cemetery targeting each unearthed

body bit bigger than ten

centimeters zeroing in on my cold-

seeking drone.

Little bullets shuttled the mineral

rubble back & forth in slime.

I am exquisite

in timing, I’m history’s texts attuned

by lute to the blood thrumming

my ear, the ear alive.

I am King Shit

the sublime. I hear the homing

hum brimming from all Zion’s fine

motor coordination in orchestra;

in goggles’ green night

vision diaspora rides aurora.

____________

About "White Phosphorous," Martha Zweig writes

No one knows "occupation" better than the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza. Reading about "Operation Cast Lead" online when it happened, I ran into some boasting by Israeli pilots, including the description of strafing to rip up Gaza's cemeteries to erupt buried Palestinian flesh in pieces no larger than 10 centimeters, in order to mock the sanctity of burial for Muslims. This poem first appeared in North American Review, Winter, 2010.

Goodwill, Julie Bruck

2012-02-13T03:24:00.000-08:00

GOODWILL
Julie Bruck

On his knees, the new employee adds more
black shoes to the black shoes rack.
His manager floats by in a leopard muumuu,
says, Good job, Johnny. When you're done,
your shift's up, so punch out for today.
He raises his face to each customer, says
Sir or M'am, offers help which no-one takes,
his face wide and eager as a child's.
It's a new job: to arrange black shoes
which smell like people's feet, to offer
unsolicited assistance, and to like it.
This first day has gone very well, indeed.
___________
About "Goodwill," Julie Bruck writes
What's surprises me isn't the rare person who "goes postal," it's the rest, who get up mornings, put on their shoes, and go on hoping for the best.

Scientific American, Daniel Luevano

2012-02-12T03:20:00.000-08:00

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
Daniel Luevano

I almost couldn't buy the issue:

one page past the cover feature

What Makes Us Human?

a photo from the Congo:
children raising empty bowls
like hands with questions

I don't have to tell you
I saw familiar little arms.
We share 99 percent DNA

with our nearest relative
the chimpanzee: 99 percent
3 billion particulates

of the human genome
as figured by a chain of computers
with serious dedicated cooling

picking for the differences.
The future humans organize,
the history biology

expresses as each of us:
difficult gods to appease.
I almost couldn't

buy the issue. We diverge
at the cerebral cortex
at where we sound words

at what new we digest
at wrist-to-thumb
at how big our brains must be.
__________
About "Scientific American," Daniel Luevano writes
Both mindsets, the scientific and the American, expect some purity to experience. Yet humans confound purity, and certain magazines and blogs confound illusions of it.

Memory/Memorial, Ingrid Wendt

2012-02-11T03:12:00.000-08:00

MEMORY/MEMORIAL

Ingrid Wendt

You whose family four years fled through jungles, whose mother,

Camp by camp, weakened, the cancer left to spread, untreated

You, whose mother fled with her children from Russian invasion

Your train bombed and bombed again as it inched its way south

You whose daughter disappeared on her everyday route home.

You to whom a government gave blankets riddled with smallpox

You whom radiation ravaged, whose fatherland won’t remember

You for whom the midnight knock on the door will echo forever

You for whom the syllables Tiananmen, Kent State, still smolder

You whose generation’s memory is short

You who cannot bear the sound of movie gunfire, cars’ backfires

You who’ve gathered together severed limbs from the wreckage

The swamp water; you, family whose mourning can never begin

You who never again will look into cameras, you who have seen

More of the face of evil than anything minds can begin to imagine

You who look for reasons where none exist, who bring to these

Elegies, images of your own, too deep for speech, wave upon

Wave they return when least you expect them, flotsam weighing

The future down. What shape do we give to horror, what form?

Silence between the paving stones of these stanzas: this is for you.

________

About "Memory/Memorial," Ingrid Wendt writes

Throughout human history, with all of its changes, one thing is constant in every country in the world: for every horror, every death, caused by other human beings – from large-scale warfare to airline crashes to the kidnapping and murder of a child coming home from school – there are those left behind who remember, who mourn, who often are isolated in their grief and in their inability to give shape to it.

This poem belongs to a 10-part poem sequence: my part of a collaborative project with a sculptor and painter in 1999. The horrors I refer to are events in the Philippines and Germany during and after the second world war, in China, Chile, Argentina, the United States during the Indian wars, and the United States today. For this poem, I created all lines (except one) of nearly equal length, to resemble paving stones of an imagined path.

from The Angle of Sharpest Ascending, Word Press, 2004

Prepositions, Elizabeth Savage

2012-02-10T10:49:00.000-08:00

PREPOSITIONS

Elizabeth Savage

So much depends

upon

the burdens

with which

we wheel

beside

our happiness. So much

happiness

depends upon a rural

imaginary

glazed with white

washing

beside darker

dressings

So much hangs

upon

short words

with

long arms

tea, bill,

all, free

Beside ourselves

once upon

a time

with our laurels

at rest

besides

So much for

history

balancing its red

load
---------
About "Prepositions," Elizabeth Savage writes

“Prepositions” began as a meditation on the function and character of prepositions, a powerful part of speech determining the relationships of words to other words, but often overlooked because they are small and common and plentiful. Once I figured out how to focus my considerations, the poem became a comment on the current state of our democracy.

“Prepositions” was first published in Prime Number and is part of a book entitled Grammar from Furniture Books Press, 2012.

The Sound That Gathers, CJ Evans

2012-02-09T03:06:00.000-08:00

THE SOUND THAT GATHERS
CJ Evans

It’s a claxon perhaps, mixed with

lowing cows. It’s a starlet’s scream

from the radio era, saved on

a scratched wax cylinder, a looped

tsunami warning, and raccoons

in the chimney. It’s the hushed money

discussion at a midnight kitchen table,

the unanswered knock of the super.

It’s fragile, but there is menace

within it, like the catfish’s teeth,

hidden by delicate whiskers. It isn’t

a prayer, it’s a keen, the cry

of the cold infant who doesn’t

understand, and it comes from

my mouth. It’s a warning, radiating

from the lighthouse’s isolated island

in the storm, and it’s ire, adrenaline,

the pop of a gas canister,

and the stutter of small arms.

It’s an opening jaw and the distress

in learning to plan for less.

It’s the lighthouse keeper behind

the beacon, who knows he won’t

be saved, but yells over

the indifferent ocean anyway,

as if it might be him that is the storm.

____________

About "The Sound That Gathers," CJ Evans writes

I'm not sure if this poem is hopeful or not, but it's a reflection of the relationship between the personal and the plural in the 99%/OWS movement. How the difficulties so many of us face, while inevitably personal, are mirrored on a national scale. It strikes me that the basic premise of society is to come together as a collective to lessen the burden on us individually, but that foundational concern seems to have gone missing at some point.

What Folks Did, Ann Privateer

2012-02-08T03:48:00.000-08:00

WHAT FOLKS DID
Ann Privateer

When I was a child

so much time was spent

cleaning things.

We lived with my grandparents

for a time, where cousins, aunts,

and uncles lived too.

Monday was wash day

many loads kept

the agitator humming.

Laundry suds were

saved in buckets to wash

floors or the cars.

Tuesday was ironing day

with 5 boards set up

in the basement.

I sat on the stairs watching

the women's technique

and learned to iron

and listened to gossip

and learned about

human nature.

Wednesday's furniture

polish smells sent me

outside to play.

--------------

About "What Folks Did," Ann Privateer writes

The poem is about my childhood, It was a time that was both open and closed in many ways.

Paradelle for the Masses, Erika Moss Gordon

2012-02-07T03:37:00.000-08:00

PARADELLE FOR THE MASSES

Erika Moss Gordon

We, the ninety nine percent!

shouting to one and all.

And the one percent,

all shouting to we ninety nine.

In the Middle East, a fight for freedom.

In the Middle East a fight for freedom

from beneath dictators paid for by the United States.

From beneath dictators paid for by the United States.

A fight for freedom from beneath dictators

in the United States, paid for by the Middle East.

We drive the cars, they drink the gas.

Too much on this earth, and the ice is melting.

The cars on this earth, they drive the gas,

we drink too much, and the ice is melting.

When will we all stop and listen?

When will we all stop and listen

to the voices who are calling, rising up,

to the voices who are calling, rising up?

When will the voices stop and listen

to we who are calling - all rising up?

-------------

About "Paradelle for the Masses," Erika Moss Gordon writes

The paradelle is a four stanza poem invented by U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins as a parody of the villanelle. The form follows a strict line and word format so that in the first three stanzas, lines one and three are repeated and then every single word from the first four lines must be used in lines five and six. Technically, the final stanza is supposed to use every word from the first three stanzas and only those words, but oh well – these days it’s all about breaking paradigms, right?

Ode To Neruda (Esperanza), Justin Evans

2012-02-06T03:27:00.000-08:00

ODE TO NERUDA (ESPERANZA)
Justin Evans

Because of you

tonight I write

in green ink.

I write in green

as you always did—

green being

the color of hope,

renewal, life,

nature, epiphany,

free passage,

and leisure.

All these things

were yours. All

were verbs and nouns

one time or another

whether steeped

in the monsoon

of politics

or the majesty

of Machu Picchu.

I see you writing.

I see you at your desk,

crafting and weaving

vast tapestries,

marrying green

to the blue ocean

and blue skies

above Chilean horizon

even as you lay dying

still hoping

for a socialist world.

I see your women—

figureheads stolen

from their ships

feeding your surrealistic

dream poems. I want to

make love to them

and set them free.

I see your odes

swirl into the night,

evidence

of your ardor and lust,

but not even their redness

can disguise

their green roots.

Tonight I write

in green ink

hoping for myself

to document

green

in its many forms.

Mira: I want to believe America is green.

I want to think

America has hope

but I don’t know

if there is enough

green ink in my pen

for all of America.

We are vast like

the blue-green sea

but we despair, languish,

lay weighed down

by our sins. We are

carnivorous dogs

running the streets

devouring everything

that smells like hope.

How did you continue

to write in green

after your little girl’s death?

Was it habit

or did you switch

to another green virtue,

perhaps epiphany

or safe passage? I know

you rarely

thought of leisure

on the run

all those years

chasing the Nobel

being chased

by Republicans.

America never sleeps.

We are constantly

on the prowl.

I am weary

of America lying

to itself. Maybe

we need socialism.

Maybe no one candidate

can offer enough

hope for America

our appetite too immense

to ever glut or satiate

our thirst.

It’s not that we can’t use it,

just that we make

excuses for our failures

ride the pendulum

to extremes. For us

there is no moderation.

We have taken more

than our fair share,

and it is time

to give back

what we have stolen.

I hope America has the courage to do the right thing.

Tonight I write in green

because you wrote

green verses,

lived a life of green.

Tomorrow

I will paint my house green

and I will give away pens

filled with green ink.

A revolution of hope.

---------
About "Ode To Neruda (Esperanza)," Justin Evans writes
I have loved Pablo Neruda's poetry for a very long time and over the years I have made many attempts to address him in my poetry, but this poem is my most honest attempt. I, like so many people, have hope for poetry and I have a special hope for the things I talk about in this poem.

The Word, reclaimed, Leslie Simon

2012-02-05T11:34:00.000-08:00

THE WORD, RECLAIMED
Leslie Simon

Occupy, as in to dwell in. Our public squares and parks and streets and hearts. To reclaim. The word. To lay down prayer and peace for what has been taken, forsaken.

Occupy, as in to fill up. With voices in solemn assembly and miraculous unity. To congregate. To complicate. To negotiate. To settle in. To solidify.

Occupy, as in to re-take, re-make, set up, start up, power up, double up, triple, quadruple,

exponentiate.

Occupy, as in to look ahead, watch out, come out. To embrace your most certain uncertainty with this word, any word, whose heavy history needs liberation, decolonization. End military occupations everywhere. Deploy dwell-ins. Love-ins. Teach-ins and outs throughout countries and continents.

Occupy. Do it or something like it. Now.

----------

About "The Word, reclaimed," Leslie Simon writes

This prose poem hopes to address the issue raised by indigenous people and other people subjected to military occupations, who have cause to object to the use of the word "occupy." I try to reclaim the word here so that this glorious movement may continue to use it without offense.

Word Occupation, Vikki Marshall

2012-02-04T03:44:00.000-08:00

WORD OCCUPATION

Vikki Marshall

They’ve tried to sell me something I don’t want.

They’ve tried to tell me about the lifestyle they flaunt.

They feed our kids like pigs around a trough

pork laced rubber foods, corn based and cruel.

They tell us which books we can read

condemning those who think, praising those with greed.

We are codified, sodomied, left to feed on their waste

for awhile we were silent, a child eating paste

our mouths were glued shut

until we heard, “RISE UP! RISE UP!”

The 1% can have all the glory they seek

but give us the freedom to protest for the meek.

Give us the voice that speaks truth versus crap

let us bring drums and words and the others to mass.

I’ve seen the way a rich man lives; I’ve seen the golden toilet

the other side shits in

it was supposed to trickle down eventually to me,

although I’m aging gracefully it’s been ages since I’ve seen

a fairness that works by compassionate means.

It’s hard to see truth beyond all that high paying green.

We’re down here, waiting, in God We Can Trust

but we’re just being crushed.

The union men who toil at 12 hour days, the waitress who earns

a few cents as paid.

The responders who carry us away from puddles of blood

they don’t care who we are, they just do what’s good.

The sweepers, the garbagers, the men on the ground

your doorway wouldn’t gleam without them around.

And those fruits on your table, they wouldn’t exist

Without many, many immigrants who broke their backs

just to pick.

Our voices are loud because it’s all we have left

so we’re sleeping in parks and drumming in crowds

we’re pounding our hearts, we’re standing proud.

We want this country to be better than it is

to offer a future to more than just wealthy kids.

We’re a people who believe in prosperity

but not the kind where only 1% succeeds.

We want to eat broccoli and greens without all the cheese,

we want to be fed a future, not the forced lies of a dream.

We just want a touch of humanity

we’ll allow you to keep your immense vanity,

you might try to flick us away, to dismiss our thought

just remember you can’t sell us what our ancestors bought

----------

About "Word Occupation," Vikki Marshall writes

This poem was written after seeing the energy of the movement being displaced as I realized that actual movements cannot be erased so easily. So in solidarity I send these words out to you.

A Massive Dying off, Camille T. Dungy

2012-02-03T03:10:00.000-08:00

A MASSIVE DYING OFF

Camille T. Dungy

When the fish began their dying you didn’t worry.

You bought new shoes.

They looked like crocodiles:

snappy and rich,

brown as delta mud.

Even the box they shipped in was beautiful, bejeweled.

You tore through masses of swaddling paper,

these shoes!

carefully cradled

in all that cardboard by what

you now understand

must have been someone’s tiny, indifferent hands.

The five-fingered sea stars you heard about on NPR.

You must have been driving to Costco.

It must have been before all the visitors arrived.

You needed covers, pillows, disposable containers.

At Costco, everything comes cheap.

Sea stars, jellies, anemones, all the scuttlers and hoverers

and clingers along the ocean floor. A massive dying off, further displacing

depleted oxygen, cried the radio announcer.

You plugged in your iPod.

Enough talk. You’d found the song you had been searching for.

One cargo ship going out. One cargo ship coming in.

Crabs crawling up trawler lines.

Giant lobsters walking

right onto the shore.

You’ve been sitting in your car

watching the sunset over the Golden Gate.

NPR again.

One cargo ship going out. One cargo ship coming in.

Those who can are leaving.

The Marin Headlands crouch

toward the ocean,

fog so thick on their side of the bay

you can’t tell crag from cloud from sea.

One cargo ship headed out, another coming in.

They’re looking for a place

where they can breath.

You’ve been here less than an hour.

When the sun has finished setting

you’ll go home.

In the dream, your father is the last refuse to wash ashore.

This wasn’t what you wanted.

Any of you.

The first sign

of trouble was the bottle with the message.

That washed up years ago.

Then, so many bottles

the stenographers couldn’t answer all the messages anymore.

The women of the village wept when your father died.

Then they lined up to deliver tear-stained tissue to the secretary of the interior

who translated their meaning

and had it writ out on a scroll.

These were the answers your people had been waiting for!

That papyrus wound around your father like a bandage.

The occasion announced,

you prayed proper prayers, loaded him onto an outrigger,

set him off,

but here he is again. Stinking.

Swelling.

You can’t dispose of the rising dead and you’re worried.

What can you do?

___________

About "A Massive Dying Off," Camille T. Dungy writes

This poem was written for City Lights Bookstore's 2008 May Day reading, STRIKE: Igniting the Fuse of Possibility, for which 30 poets were asked, "What serves as meaningful resistance in an age of disaster capitalism?" But when I gave it to the organizer he wanted something a little bit more hopeful.

From Smith Blue (Southern Illinois University Press: 2011). By permission.

Occupied, Gillian Conoley

2012-02-02T03:18:00.000-08:00

occupied

Gillian Conoley

remaster, I got big sign I amble off

face lit as skin of someone bathing.

young frayed hoods smell saltier.

police refuse the stairs, one gropes a breast

under a sports bra. historical pic! crowd

shoots all then closes behind, laptop.

you sexy thang. anticrow anticrow

anticrows and swoops

the street, imperfectable, police seem

to have insatiable sexual

appetites, skyscraper bends over itself, as if to bow

or readjust, then lighthouses

a tangerine rolling out of a tent

is a real tangerine and people are

intemperate, out of air current hot breath and other waves

of Being, wherein each calls for the other,

gives a sign. how to lift

the limit between the body and the world––

birds cry! lovers die!

hermit can’t eat the plastic

the sports bra snaps back

of great design

vet of bones all his brothers dead inside him stops to pose

with the lean of a milkman, smiles his truths of 1945.

the policeman’s hand is gone

imaginal, archetypal

the best messages are mutual and free from all ambition, like a wishbone.

hermit licks the wrapper.

Steve Jobs we’re sorry you died

images feel good taken into the human palm.

how to back into our new instruments

how light November rain

--------------

About "occupied," Gillian Conoley writes:

Wrote this poem after an Oakland occupy march. And after seeing so many photographs of police brutality much circulated on the internet. The one that was the hardest to believe was of a policeman who had his hand fully inside a woman's sports bra as he and his cohorts were restraining her. Not easy to get your hand inside a sports bra (they are really tight). The true upside to the smart phone: power to the people who see and record.

The Convergence Zone, Samantha Tetangco

2012-02-01T03:30:00.000-08:00

THE CONVERGENCE ZONE

Samantha Tetangco

The number of homeless people in the United States is equal to

the number of illegal immigrants. Give Americans back their jobs.

— A Business Major

With red ink in hand, I question logic. I ask for the source.

I leave my office to stand at a bus stop next to a woman

with a baby doll strapped to her chest. She has a box at her feet,

bound by twisted hangers, contents creeping out

busted seams. She tells me that where she’s from,

clay lines I-40, sticks to soles of shoes, bottoms of trucks,

stains her father’s deep-rooted palms like blood. The day she left,

he warned she’d be back, but it’s been two years now.

And now she spends her time along Central Avenue,

where cheap motels wither beneath the desert sun until they fold

under the passing of day by day. We squint at glaring concrete.

She says, I’m trying not to do that anymore.

She doesn’t say what that is, but I know. I peel the scab

from my wrist and wonder where the bus is,

wonder why today, of all days, I read your paper

and now this woman… You a student? she asks.

I want to draw her picture in your margins so you might understand.

But the commentary is not the text. The said is rarely changed

by things said on the side— And then, you see,

this is what I’m trying to tell you: A car drives by,

and a man sticks his head out the open window, droops a limp hand

over the side. Asks,

Wanna ride?

His tailpipe puffs black smoke and as it merges

with the murky sky, the bus passes me by.

-----------

About "Convergence Zone," Samantha Tetangco writes

I teach composition courses here in New Mexico and this poem emerged after grading a batch of papers a few years back.

Birds, In Flight, Susan B. A. Somers-Willett

2012-01-31T03:14:00.000-08:00

BIRDS, IN FLIGHT

Susan B. A. Somers-Willett

In the car back from Albany where there is no news

of a new apartment we tell Devon the middle seat

is “the cool seat” and he repeats the cool seat like a

good student, wants to roll down all the car windows

to smell the diesel breeze off the highway before fishing in my bag

for an apple or camera to take pictures of his hands against

my hands, my hand white as a moon, his hand a summertime

shadow, not quite the shade of his mother’s hand or his father’s but

something in between, and he wants to teach me something

he learned, Hey SouBee, let me, let me show you something cool

and he counts on his fingers—one, two, three, four—

the way his grandmother taught him to count from the outside-in

and I am a good student of his math until I realize

he is giving me the bird and Billie Jean squawks into her phone,

That reminds me I gotta curse out my mother for teaching my

son to give the finger, and she does, she hangs up and dials

her mother and says What the fuck are you doing

teaching your grandson to give the finger with her voice all

mean and serious You know he got written up by his teacher

for that and on the other end of the phone her voice is

exploding into her mother’s ear and I can’t hear

what her mother says in response but in a moment they are both

laughing and Devon is imitating his mother’s and my laughter

note by note and soon he’s singing Grandma taught me

to do it! Grandma taught me to do it! and that’s when

Billie Jean reaches across the car and motions to slap

him and he knows now to be silent, wincing as his hands

ascend like birds to cover his head and I

adore them both in this sudden disquiet of limbs that has

filled the car as they each rush to teach the other the gesture

of defiance that sings in her and in the small

boy in the middle

---------------

About “Birds, In Flight," Susan B. A. Somers-Willett writes:

“Birds, In Flight” is from a collaborative documentary project “Women of Troy” conducted during the summer of 2009, when we were feeling some of the first effects of economic crisis. Together with photographer Brenda Ann Kenneally and radio producer Lu Olkowski, I traveled to Troy, NY to interview working-class mothers living on the economic brink in a post-industrial town that had once been one of the wealthiest cities in the country. The resulting poems, photographs, and radio interviews appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review and aired on the PRI/WNYC radio program Studio 360 through the documentary series In Verse.

The poem describes a late afternoon drive with Billie Jean Hill and her seven-year-old son (pseudonym Devon) after they searched for an apartment that met the requirements for a Section 8 housing voucher. Billie Jean and her son were, at the time, sharing an apartment with a nearly one-year-old niece and her sister, who was days away from delivering twins, and they desperately needed to find a new apartment before the infants arrived. The scene that takes place in the poem happened when we were driving back after another fruitless day of apartment hunting.

Weaving Spiders, Heather Altfield

2012-01-30T02:58:00.000-08:00

WEAVING SPIDERS

Heather Altfield

grateful nod to Oscar Wilde

Have you ever heard the one about the selfish giant?

Who had a lovely lovely castle

and a garden full of daffodils

and a pet owl and Louis XIV’s

stilettos kept in a thick glass box? The townspeople

would come sometimes to play

and picnic in the old green groves

until some of his giant friends said,

Surely it cannot be the most beautiful country in the world

if all of the people can tramp on it!

So the garden was walled. Come not here.

said the inscription on the stones. And the plants froze,

and the trees that had not been clearcut warbled

beneath the ice. And it was so cold

that the call girls had to be helicoptered in,

and the larks bribed with suet to come out and sing.

And all the sissies had to stand outside the wall

warming their hands over oil drums

while security officers stood around

with stickups in their pockets as the giants called,

nibble nibble, like a mouse

who’s that nibbling at our house?

Kidding, said the giants. Really, come and stand

in our oven a while. You’ll make nice bread.

And when the door opened a little,

the giants saw a beautiful spring day. Cherries in blossom, etc.

Girls in midriffs, etc. Oh, how they lamented,

having been so greedy to lock the sunshine out!

And so all the doors were opened and the cake was shared.

Parcels for everyone, belated stockings by the fire,

our names stitched on the cuffs

by tiny Chinese children.

II.

And then there was that other time

that the giants called in hundreds of armed guards

to stand cocked outside of the walls

with batons and pepper spray,

as inside, over crème brulee, they yelled,

Fe, fi, fo, fum! I smell the blood of poor Americans!

Be theye alive or be theye dead, we’ll grind those bones

to make our ganache noisette!

and a girl on the streetcorner

wearing a little plastic sack on her head said,

but it’s only us, we are cold out here

behind the glass. We can see you in there,

when we light our wooden matches,

eating roast goose and chestnuts by the fire.

We can see the silver knives and forks gleaming

on the table, and the shiny copper stove

and the pretty little maid serving tea and crumpets.

We see the cigars and the flasks of brandy at nightfall,

and we know about the spring jinks, and the bocci courts

behind the beeches. We know about the Dux beds

and the underground tunnels to sugarcane homes

on sandy beaches in the everglades.

And the coffee ranches where the maids

turn into Peruvians with cracked hands.

And the cattle ranches in the Amazon

where bocci has to be played indoors.

We hear your original Vivaldi recordings

on your well-preserved Victrolas

and we can hear you laughing at us

beneath the cracked blue tarps.

Kidding! the giants said again, Come in, children,

for goodness sakes. You’ll catch cold.

And they opened the wall and tossed down

from the turret more thin things made by small hands,

and let everyone huddle in the moat

around a trashcan fire, marveling over neat scotches

at the cute little townspeople below,

bundled in cloaks made of tin.
---------

About "Weaving Spiders," Heather Altfield writes

Fairytales give such insight into the common people and their relationship to their overlords. The nod to Oscar Wilde here regards his children’s tale, “The Selfish Giant.” In the story, the selfish giant builds a wall around his garden to keep the children out and hoard all his fantastic giantly possessions to himself. Weaving Spiders Come Not Here is the long-held motto of the Bohemian Club, an organization of some of the richest and most powerful overlords of our era.

Feedlot, Susan Edwards Richmond

2012-01-29T03:20:00.000-08:00

FEEDLOT

Susan Edwards Richmond

The human calendar has ceased

in this enclosure, pounds of flesh

ripe at a toddler’s age.

Chutes flush their empty bounty.

My small consciousness

grows smaller, packed

by pleasure, my coat’s

sheen, paradoxical,

a conflation of error—

calf memory of fescue,

taste of bluestem, timothy

lost. Beneath the layers,

meat peeled back

reveals the ghost

of an ancient frame

built for grazing.

The weight of circulation

pulls at my fattened heart.

Once eating was sweet

scent and the body’s cushion.

Now I am one thing only.

Mired in stink, I eat

what comes, waves

of surfeit, golden river.

---------------

About "Feedlot," Susan Edwards Richmond writes

I wrote this poem to give voice to the animals raised under horrendous conditions to maximize profit for the commercial meat industry. Michael Pollan's writings were a source and inspiration. In a culture that has largely lost its "memory" of humane coexistence with fellow creatures, it's no wonder that human beings are similarly exploited.

Questions At An Airport, J. D. Smith

2012-01-28T03:09:00.000-08:00

QUESTIONS AT AN AIRPORT

J. D. Smith

How do you speak to a soldier

in desert camouflage

shipping out or heading home?

Do you ask him how it's going,

whatever “it” means to him?

Do you buy him a drink?

(In uniform, can he drink?)

Should sympathies be offered

for what he’s seen—

best not to ask—

or the birthdays he has missed?

Do you voice support

for his mission

as either of you sees it,

or lament the hand

that he’s been dealt?

Should you wish him good luck,

all things considered?

Do you want to hear his answer?

Do you speak?

------------

About "Questions At An Airport," J. D. Smith writes

The poem comes from wrestling my own airport experiences in the last decade when, like many civilian travelers I did not know anyone in the military. I was forced to consider the social divisions that led to that situation, as well as what those in uniform might have to witness and endure.

Albert Einstein At The Soup Kitchen, Phillip Terman

2012-01-27T03:13:00.000-08:00

ALBERT EINSTEIN AT THE SOUP KITCHEN

Phillip Terman

Do I look like anyone?, he asks,

as he swoops he long spoon into the peas,

lifts it a few inches

and holds it steady to pour

onto the tray of the next famished mouth,

shouts to George for more

as his supply empties down.

I’m the bread and donut man

in this assembly line of volunteers

who gather for our three hour

of weekly service and socialism:

Jose the finger-pointing Filipino

who pours the punch and repeats:

The wages of sin is death

and only reads Paradise from the Comedy,

for his description of heaven, he says, and light;

Jake the Buddhist, who scrapes the dishes

as they are returned, saves whatever

appears untouched for someone else’s

insatiable hunger;

Sal, who tells me he was on the other side

of the line, meaning he was one of the thousand

who form every morning single-file around this Church

of the Apostles, up 9^th Avenue and around

28^th Street,

like the snake, he chants,

looking out the window beyond Crack Park,

cursed above the beasts of the city

to eat dust all the days of its life.

And their eyes are filled with dust,

drugged and sleepy,

bodies stiff from sidewalk cardboard sofas.

The peaman, it turns out, looks like Albert Einstein,

the shaggy white hair and white mustache,

pronounced nose and dark sad eyes.

I’m an actor, he explains. They pay me to look like the genius.

He shows me his card: e=mc squared:

Equity equals many characters,

and I’m honored to be near even the resemblance of the man—

not because I understand relativity

and the contradicting theories of light,

but because of how steady he is with a spoon,

filling each helping to the brim,

as if each portion should be equal

and abundant.

--------------

About "Albert Einstein At The Soup Kitchen," Phillip Terman writes

This poem was written in response to my experience volunteering at the Church of the Holy Apostles in New York. The person beside me really did look like Albert Einstein, and the story is true. I was struck by how this volunteer who actually portrayed Einstein in commercials, really reflected the genius's humanitarian side, and how that seemed to me at the time more essential than his scientific achievements.

from The House of Sages (Mammoth Books, 2005)

http://www.poetrymagazine.com/editors_choice/winter10/philip_terman_page1.htm

Democracy in Winter, Lisa Steinmann

2012-01-26T03:52:00.000-08:00

DEMOCRACY IN WINTER

Lisa Steinmann

Pushing and shoving

makes a certain kind of warmth.

Conversation starts.

----------

About "Democracy in Winter," Lisa Steinmann writes

This season of protest has been constructive and I find it exciting when people speak up and really dare to debate important issues. It heats things up and ultimately--warmth will help us survive a cold season.

To Occupy: An Advice, C. J. Sage

2012-01-25T03:46:00.000-08:00

TO OCCUPY: AN ADVICE

C. J. Sage

You pull the string to a mystery loft

and down drops a broken ladder.

Pull again, some paper stars.

The third pull brings odd rising:

Flipped up from a floorboard,

a shooting-gallery target

leaning eternally away. Perfect

clouds lift from the meadow

far beyond a picture window.

So pick up your pace, ramp up your game,

turn that string into a pulley

and float your package skyward—

who can truly state the value of it?

You could wrap it in canvas

lounge chair covers, waterproofed,

but that’s no guarantee—

if the cushions are inside,

the hips of some old gods may prosper;

if the frames, when they throw them back,

just fix the ladder. I can only say

let nothing strange dissuade,

for nothing easy is forever,

but all is well, for your home

will wring you free.
------------
About "To Occupy: An Advice," C. J. Sage writes
"Occupy" is a poem about resilience and resourcefulness, about freedom and responsibility, even when--especially when--it seems that things are falling apart. www.cjsage.com

In Vigil (2), Lee Sharkey

2012-01-24T03:42:00.000-08:00

In Vigil (2)

Lee Sharkey

If the whole body is a heart, then the woman who steps out of the car with Texas plates to yell at the silent peace vigil is a heart overlaid with hate

I have two children in the war and let me tell you: They are the heroes, you don’t deserve to walk this earth

A mouth pursed over pain

I’ll take the opportunity to tell you about my family. My son’s no “stupid soldier”—got a master’s degree. He went to Iraq to bring democracy

Slides into her car’s steel shell and slams the door. Glass can’t hide what’s writhing up her, what compels her to climb out and tell

Now he lives from minute to minute. . . .

Do any of you know what it’s like to be up all night, every minute thinking

School photo of a dark-haired girl, blurred under plastic. She shows it, half grandmother-proud, half defiant.She’s seven and misses her daddy. A little girl needs her daddy

No! jumps back, I don’t care what you have to say

But I am forming words for her. I want to touch her cheek and say them

I recall the waiting room, the surgeon’s teeth, the monitor, months of terror, my own son’s heart set totally on his pain

I would wrap my arm around her, pull her close, say quietly, I see what it would cost to see your country has betrayed you

from A Darker, Sweeter String, Off the Grid Press, 2008

---------------

About "In Vigil (2)," Lee Sharkey writes

One of the many unfortunate consequences of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially in the early years, has been to pit the working class families that supply the ranks of the military against those who actively oppose the wars. “In Vigil (2)” was born of a painful encounter at a Women in Black peace vigil that brought that conflict home to me. The vigil was silent, so the poem was my response.

Preliminary Report from the Committee on Appropriate Postures for the Suffering, Jon Davis

2012-01-23T03:26:00.000-08:00

PRELIMINARY REPORT FROM THE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATE POSTURES FOR THE SUFFERING
Jon Davis

We who wear clean socks and shoes are tired
of your barefoot complaining, your dusty footprints
on our just-cleaned rugs. Tired, too of your endless ploys—
the feigned amputations, the imaginary children
you huddle with outside the malls, your rags and bottles,
the inconvenient positions you assume. Though we remain
impressed by your emaciation and your hunger and,
frankly, find you photogenic and think your images
both alarming and aesthetically pleasing, to do anything
more than sigh will require a complex process
of application and review, a process that is currently
in the development stage. Meanwhile, may we suggest
you moderate your public suffering at least
until the Committee on Appropriate Postures for the Suffering
is able to produce guidelines. Do not be alarmed.
The committee has asked me to assure you
that they are sensitive both to the aesthetic qualities
of your suffering—the blank stares, the neotonous beauty
as the flesh recedes and the eyes seem to grow larger,
the haloes of flies—and to the physical limitations
of human endurance and the positioning of limbs.
They will, I am certain, ask that you not lift
your naked children like offerings to the gods.
On this topic, discussion has centered around the unfair
advantage such ploys give the parents of such children.
The childless, whether by choice or fate, are left
to wither silently in the doorways while those with children
proffer and gesticulate in the avenues unabated.
This offends our cherished sense of fairness,
the democratic impulse that informs and energizes
our discussions. Therefore, we ask for restraint,
and where restraint is lacking, we will legislate.
Please be forewarned. In addition, the committee
will recommend that the shouting of slogans,
whether directed at governments or deities, be kept
to a minimum. Not only is such shouting displeasing
aesthetically, but it suggests there is something
to be done. Believe me, no one is more acutely aware
of your condition than we who must ignore it everyday
on our way to the capitol. In this matter, we ask only
that you become more aware of your fellow citizens,
who must juggle iPods, blackberries, briefcases
and cell phones, lattes. Who must march steadily
or be trampled by the similarly burdened citizens
immediately behind them. Your shouting and pointing
does not serve you well. Those of us employed
by the agency are sworn to oversee you. If we seem,
as you suggest, to have overlooked you instead,
that is an oversight and will be addressed, I am certain,
in our annual review. Please be aware: To eliminate
your poverty, your hunger, your aesthetically
pleasing, yet disturbing, presence in our doorways,
above our heating grates, in our subway tunnels
and under our freeways would mean the elimination
of the agency itself and quite possibly a decline
in tourism. Those of us employed by the agency
have neither the stamina, persistence, nor the luminous
skin tones that you present to the viewing public.
Finally, to those who would recommend programs,
who would call for funding and action,
I must remind you that we have been charged not
with eliminating your suffering but with managing it.

-------------

About "Preliminary Report from the Committee on Appropriate Postures for the Suffering" Jon Davis writes

"The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie." --Karl Marx

Done, Rod Stryker

2012-01-22T03:08:00.000-08:00

DONE
Rod Stryker

Are we done footing the bill,

then have said feet

shoved in our mouths

if we object

or protest treatment

no better

than sheep to slaughter

by privileged owners

who count coins

and bet on

the 99% never

standing up

for inalienable human

rights?

Are we done...folding,

caving to those

who put us out

in the dead of winter

careless, shameless

in their actions

that effect thousands

just for the bottom line?

Are we done...kneeling,

bowing to allow for

wealth-clad shoes

to stand on sore shoulders,

trod on stooped

backs scarred

by the whip,

hate, and indifference?

Are we done…?

----------

About "Done," Rod Stryker writes

This poem came about as a direct reflection of not only the Occupy protests occurring around the world, but also the ideas behind the Arab Spring and similar fights for basic inalienable rights that seem to be coming to a head recently. Not to mention, this poem comes about because of the ever widening chasm between the the haves and the have-nots.

I Make An Old Resolution To End All Talking, Matthew Kulisch

2012-01-21T03:01:00.000-08:00

I MAKE AN OLD RESOLUTION TO END ALL TALKING

Matthew Kulisch

Gazing at the sky tonight, just hours before New Year's Eve, there are notable exceptions to every single rule. The pine trees for instance curl their boughs toward nothing. The opera house, with its slanted roof, slants for no reason. The sky excuses itself from language. Even the bank marquee neglects a few of its letters, reading WELL FAR. When I was younger, I wanted to do away with language entirely—like the world appears to have done this night. Instead, I think about a very old woman who asked me for money outside a café on Octavia. She was missing a sock and shoe—and she came back not five minutes later to ask me again., “I wanna get a Diet Coke." I had given her a dollar already—last of the cash I don’t usually carry. I don't like parting with change but like lying even less. People, rarely, want to know how they will be used. But tonight, I sit in a borrowed car, strangely calm. I am supposed to be with Trevor. Instead, the text-message conversation is dwindling, and sex—which is never an exception—seems abruptly out of the question. Can you spare a little something for the carnal? Nope. At least, not this year.

--------------
About "I Make An Old Resolution To End All Talking," Matthew Kulisch writes
This poem balances the two narratives of desire--desire; and that which so often runs at cross purposes with desire, the preference to be left alone--in the hopes of teasing out a bit of their kinship. It seems to me that timing and talking are everything to anyone who wants. Yet this poem seemed also an attempt to occupy my own adulterated subject position: supporting the Occupy Movement at the same time that I could not in good conscience join it.

Made In Wall Street, Tim Kahl

2012-01-20T03:03:00.000-08:00

MADE IN WALL STREET
Tim Kahl
He held the bulk of his wealth in dollars
     since they were cradled in Joachimsthal,
     the silver nest of centuries ago, where the mint
     was forced to convert to Catholicism.
     In the name of the saints, they shortened it
     to taler — taler, taler, who knew the trading floors
     would echo its incredible legend, the screens
     would bleep of its invisible journey.
He held the bulk of his wealth in dollars, in dollars
     while the game of pursuit played on into Dutch as
     daalder, the Italian tallero, dala in Hawaiian,
     and into English as that which shall never be
     forsaken. At a standstill, one can witness
     the heart of the fluttering beast, its struggle
     to move the materials of men into position.
     Iron ore, earth, and electron rehearse the spice
     and silk route turns, obedient to their neurotic master.
He held the bulk of his wealth in dollars, in dollars. In dollars
     he did trust. He did trust in their production
     and in their domination of this dirty century,
     the trains and interstates shifting the weight
     of the industrial base. Then a semiconductor is
     soldered to the innovator faith, and finally,
     securitized debt is sold and sampled, sampled
     around the globe — what the hell did he still hold?
     He held the bulk of his wealth in dollars, dollars
     until there was no semblance of capital control.
------------
About "Made in Wall Street," Tim Kahl writes
It struck me at some point that the great innovations that the best American minds of my generation had to offer the world were not better ways to do or build anything as previous generations of American innovators had. Their great innovation was to repackage debt and sell it as a security. This is what the quants provided, those members of the American brain trust who ordinarily might have given us space travel or electronic wizardry or manufacturing acumen in another generation. Ultimately, capital is the only game in town for those who want to see the United States as a service based economy (read finance, insurance, real estate). [The notion of securitized debt was supposed to work out so nicely — on paper at least.] Of course, with the dollar becoming the primary focus of the new American “brain power,” I thought it would also be useful for the story of the dollar to be related as though it were an old family friend whose origins had been mythologized — thanks to Jack Weatherford for his help with this.

Trabajo, Rachelle Escamilla

2012-01-19T03:57:00.000-08:00

TRABAJO
Rachelle Escamilla

From the depth of need and despair, people can work together, can organize themselves to solve their own problems and fill their own needs with dignity and strength. They must learn to think and act for themselves-and be free. - Cesar Chavez

It is hard to live in the triangle tip, the last
bight before the pass through the Quien
Sabe mountain range, before nomansland.

Here my family’s lowincomehome
below the tooth water tower,

Here my father’s white

picket fence hides our mudcolored bodies.
He tends his chile, cilantro and nopales,
in the crook of his caramel elbow he rubs
cilantro to release the sharp green

How to tell           him he may not find
work at forty seven beat from the sun, so so
young,          years climbing up ladders
plucking windows and planting them in the
gold mine of mansions the pictures he would
take! The houses so so so!

He guards our house with his tattered flag
checks the creaks in the fence, fills the holes
from snakes, raccoons,     the stray dogs.
Runs his fingers ‘round the edges of our windows
his expertise noticing problem areas, screen needs,
places        where work
---------------
About "Trabajo," Rachelle Escamilla It is funny when I began writing I thought that it would be difficult to incorporate all of my feelings about the OWS movement in one poem. But this sums it up for me. Culturally, family is central. Nothing comes before family, not dreams, not success, not the self. Whenever something happens we all come home, from every corner of wherever. This time it feels permanent. My mom and dad were teen parents, I'm almost thirty and they're in their late 40s. They had no chance for higher education and had no other option but work and work hard. That's what my dad has known, but last year he lost his job in the construction world (installing windows), and he was only a couple years away from retirement. Luckily, unlike most of my colleagues, I was able to get some teaching jobs. We will manage. With five people, two dogs, a bunny, and a handful of hamsters under the same, small roof, we will manage.

Rights, Martha Collins

2012-01-18T03:55:00.000-08:00

RIGHTS

Martha Collins

He had no rights, they beat him up, you’ve got

no right, he said, and he was right, we thought,

we saw them beat him up, right? it happened right

over there, but it was proper form, the jury

said, and they were right, if you could judge

the beating by what happened next, our driver

said, right off they up and burn the place,

this rights stuff goes too far, next thing it’s an-

imal rights, vegetable rights, mow ’em down

I say, he said, and turned, he had the right

of way, license to get where he needed to go,

but what if they stopped him anyway, they’re

the law and that’s their right, the right side

of the body’s on the other side of the heart.

----------------

About "Rights," Martha Collins writes

I wrote this poem in 1992, after the acquittal of the officers who assaulted Rodney King and the subsequent riots in Los Angeles. But the poem has continued to resonate for me on a number of levels. Most recently, I read it for Occupy Boston, at one of a series of poetry readings organized by Peter Desmond, dubbed “Occupoetry.”

from Some Things Words Can Do (Sheep Meadow, 1998)

Beit Sahur, Fred Marchant

2012-01-17T03:48:00.000-08:00

BEIT SAHUR

Fred Marchant

Occupy Boston, Dec. 9, 2011

Black plastic garbage bags flapping away,

the wind said to be high tonight, half the spaces

without tents and tarps, some naked ground,

a rain-soft dirt underfoot, the rest just the dull

paving stones of Dewey Square, all the colors

muted, as quiet as the few who are left, those

who have decided to be arrested. Stacking,

packing up the camp library, the kitchen gear,

counting. Here in the meditation tent someone

is just taking a nap, his legs straight out, kicking

as if in a bad dream, perhaps, of the sheer glass

walls I passed on my way, the higher offices,

the brick parapets and vertical cities, the banca,

the lender’s tables and their shirted servants

at the windows looking down over the police

in lime-green dayglo vests. An artist with

a camera project in mind is shooting the shapes

that tents will take when the frames are pulled

and the nylon billows like a sail in an eager wind.

There is no fear anywhere, only the sense that this

first part is over. In a rough-hewn wooden box

from the Sign Tent, bundles of brown cardboard,

and in magic marker ink, the wit of the many

birth pains of a language about ends and means,

packed into a wooden trough, under the chiming of

the South Station Clock, in this Shepherds’ Field,

Beit Sahur, “place of the night watch,” and manger.

------------

About "Beit Sahur," Fred Marchant writes

This is a poem that records some images from the last afternoon of the Occupy Boston site, on Dec. 9, before the official, and non-violent, end to that part of the larger effort. "Beit Sahur" is the phonetic Arabic name for the Shepherd's Fields outside Bethlehem.

Pre-Occupied, Heid E. Erdrich

2012-01-16T03:42:00.000-08:00

PRE-OCCUPIED

Heid E. Erdrich

River, river, river

I never, never, never

etched your spiral icon in limestone

or, for that matter, pitched a tent on cement

near your banks.

Banks of marble, stock still, all movement in the plaza,

river walking its message on an avenue

rallied in bitter wind.

Excuse my digression, my mind tends…

In reality, my screen is lit with invitations:

bake a casserole -send pizza- make soup for the 99%

Sorry, somehow I haven’t time.

Flow, flow, flow both ways in time.

There’s a river to consider after all.

No time, no hours, no decades, no millennia.

No, I cannot dump cans of creamed corn

and turkey on noodles and offer forth

sustenance again.

A bit pre-occupied, we original 100%

who are also 1%, more or less.*

Simply distracted by sulfide emissions, tar sands, pipelines, foster care, **

polar bears, hydro-fracking, and the playlist deeply intoning:

Super Man never made any money… ***

River, river, river. Our river.

Map of the Milky Way,

reflection of stars

from whence all life commenced.

100% of all life on our planet.

River in the middle, Mississippi,

not the East Coast Hudson where this all started,

waterway Max Fleischer’s team lushly rendered

via the wonder of Technicolor.****

Emerging from an underwater lair,

a Mad Scientist we comprehend as indigenous,

has lost his signifiers (no braids, no blanket)

but we recognize him.

A snappy dresser who flashes a maniac grin,

he is not,

not your TV Indian.

Ignoble Savage: “…and I still say Manhattan

rightfully belongs to my people. “

Superman: “Possibly, but just what

do you expect us to do about it?”

Occupy. Occupy. Worked for the 99.

Occupy, re-occupy: Alcatraz and Wounded Knee.

Sorry, somehow now I’ve too much time.

Flow, flow, flow both ways, story-history-story.

There’s a river that considers us after all.

All time, all hours, all decades, all millennia.

River, river, river

I never, never, never--

but that is not to say that I won’t ever.

------------

About "Pre-Occupied," Heid E. Erdrich writes

NOTES OF PRE-OCCUPIED DIGRESSION

*Descendants of the indigenous population of the U.S. remain just a tad less than 1% of the population according to the 2010 census. If you add Native Hawaiians to the total we are 1.1% of the population. So, we are, more or less, the original 1% as well as the original 100%. http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html

**As the Occupy Movement took hold, indigenous groups continued stuggles and to protect our homelands from immient threats such as the tar sands in Canada and its Keystone pipeline, copper mining in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and hydro fracking elsewhere—everywhere, it seems. http://www.ienearth.org/ This era of alternative energy has become the new land grab, the new water grab. Indigneous activists are thoroughly pre-occupied with the social and environmental issues I mention and more. Activists can’t be everywhere at once—not like Superman.

***I refer here, of course, to the Crash Test Dummies’ 1991“Superman Song,” that despairs the world will never see altruism like that of the unpaid hero. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuuM00tMxww

****In this 1942 cartoon titled Electric Earthquake, an indigenous (but not stereotypically “Indian”) Mad Scientist is thwarted, of course, by Superman. At one point Clark Kent admits indigenous land claim as “possibly“ valid, but says there’s nothing the Daily Planet can do about it. A shrewd Tessla-wannabe, our villain attempts to publish his demands first, then occupies Lois Lane while toppling Manhattan skyscrapers. You can see this beauty all over the internets including on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=st9UIZt9qZk

Hymn: The Rubbing of Noses, David Fox

2012-01-15T03:14:00.000-08:00

HYMN: THE RUBBING OF NOSES
David Fox

Let's make the business cycle more harrowing,
You and your skin in the game

Boom busting out all over your work clothes,
Excesses of your pension and your puny union too. Staining.

The news crawl demands you misunderstand macro-economics
In the four seconds allotted besotted opinion

And it does not like modern art or this poem
Or the smarty-pants expert not educated by

Oh that was my fraternity too!
Get a job, hippie. We had you at the Laffer Curve.

Our job is you suffer our uncertainty,
Risk we inflict distinct from risk we risk

And you're damned lucky God didn't put you on the Euro.
We have our money. And we have your money.

And pepper spray. Wipe that stupid look into your face.
-------------

About "Hymn: The Rubbing of Noses," David Fox writes

I began this poem as a reaction to Kevin Drum's blogpost here: http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/11/how-2008-radicalized-us-all

His concluding paragraph:

"This is how 2008 radicalized me. It's one thing to know that the rich and powerful basically control things. That's the nature of being rich and powerful, after all. But in 2008 and the years since, they've really rubbed our noses in it. It's frankly hard to think of America as much of a true democracy these days."

Sting, Simmons B. Buntin

2012-01-14T21:54:00.000-08:00

STING

Simmons B. Buntin

Pocked

then sealed

                        the under-
                                                ground wombs
of Sonoran bees
                        with names like
                                                Diadosia ronconis &
Melissodes paucipuncta
                        are at a loss
                                                for profit
That is there is
                        no honey &
                                                no hive—
a thousand species
                        solitary
                                                except that ritual
that flower-mad dance
                        that risk of sting
                                                on sweet sting
& in a desert
                        in Israel
                                                ground-dwelling bees
milk

                        the nectar from
                                                rich blooms
A thousand
                        species there
                                                too
& like our
                        Tumacacori valley
                                                also a wall
to keep a people
                        out—
                                                & also too high
for the low-flying bees
                        to cross

                                    or cross-fertilize
the crops
                        grown south
                                                to raise
mad profits
                        and feed
                                                madder mouths
& how’s that

for fertile
justice

-------

About "Sting," Simmons B. Buntin writes

"Sting" is a poem inspired by the incredible diversity of native bees in the Sonoran desert, a diversity matched only in the deserts of Israel. Which got me thinking about walls -- in the Middle East and in the Southwest, where the U.S.-Mexico border wall divides more than just the human species. The vast majority of native bees are ground-dwelling and solitary. Like colonized honey (and Africanized) bees, however, they are integral to pollinating native plants and non-native crops.

Team Manager, Morgan Harlow

2012-01-13T03:49:00.000-08:00

TEAM MANAGER
Morgan Harlow

I dreamed George Bush was a
department store manager
and I a rogue employee, minutes late
and a couple of paychecks short,
rounded the corner to where
he himself, personable and cute,
enthused his team.

Taken note of yet not invited
to the huddle, I heard
“You’re either with us or against us.”

With an empty cart
and a twisted heart
I thumbed my way back
to consciousness.
------------
About "Team Manager," Morgan Harlow writes
Politics, the workplace and society are permeated with divisiveness, where some are invited to the huddle, but the majority are left outside. Today we wake up in an America where the championing of a wealthy elite and disenfranchisement of everyone else has led to economic disaster and an urgent need to reclaim our democracy.