by Margit Berman
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| AI graphic by Nightcafé for The New Verse News |
This poem went to the protest.
This poem went to the protest and was arrested.
It did nothing wrong.
Just stood and told the truth.
This poem has listened all day long to lies.
This poem's own mother called it evil right to its face
and it is not evil
even though sometimes it wishes it was.
This poem heard lies about zines
and the reflecting pool
and whether anyone needed a ride.
This poem is not evil
and always stands and tells the truth
and—tell the truth—that it why you hate it,
isn't it?
That is why they hanged this detained poem
without a trial
from the gallows
in the trees
until the protest signs
slipped from its hands and fell,
until the words convulsed,
ceased
in its broken neck.
Margit Berman is a writer, psychologist, artistic director of Jackson Street Arts in St. Paul, MN, and faculty at the University of Saint Thomas and the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. Her poetry has been published in If Poetry Magazine, The Quarry at Split This Rock, Foreign Policy in Focus, on the Mississippi Valley Poetry Walk, and in the anthology, Try to Have Your Writing Make Sense, among others. She has won poetry contests including at the Poetry Free for All, Garrison Keillor’s Green Light at the End of the Dock Poetry Festival, and from the League of Minnesota Poets.
