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| Planned Parenthood officials on Monday announced plans for a mobile abortion clinic—a 37ft recreational vehicle that will stay in Illinois but travel close to the borders of adjoining states that have banned the procedure since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade earlier this year. —The Guardian, October 4, 2022 |
or to. And sometimes, just the promise of anything other than
where you are is all you need to leave. To live. This fills me
with worried peace… My friend told me that I need
to practice gratitude, to be thankful for mobile clinics
and mobile apps and even my mobile home—
these places of temporary comfort, where people
might treat you like a person, can understand you are
a being, human, like them, to help with the need to avoid
suffering, needlessly, and perhaps be understood,
be under caring hands, especially after the hands
that strangled you, tried to own you, drown you,
breakdown you, in your nightgown, you in front
of your children and the law-and-order and the Bible
that want to shame you, and then, at the border,
this safety, waiting, at the border, thank God, at the border.Sharmila Voorakkara received her MFA from the University of Virginia. Her first collection of poems, Fire Wheel, was published by the University of Akron Press.
Ron Riekki co-edited Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice (Michigan State University Press).