The New Verse News presents politically progressive poetry on current events and topical issues.
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Showing posts with label Eileen Ivey Sirota. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Eileen Ivey Sirota. Show all posts
The governor of Alabama on Friday signed into law two controversial bills: one that criminalizes healthcare providers who offer gender-affirming care to transgender youth and another that requires students to use bathrooms that match the gender on their birth certificates. Kay Ivey, a Republican, said she “believed very strongly that if the Good Lord made you a boy, you are a boy, and if he made you a girl, you are a girl”. The anti-gender-affirming care bill, described as the first legislation of its kind in the US, makes it a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison to provide medical care including hormone treatment and puberty blockers to minors. It also includes bans on gender-affirming surgeries for transgender youth, which are extremely rare, and compels school personnel to disclose to a parent or guardian that a “minor’s perception of his or her gender or sex is inconsistent with the minor’s sex”. —The Guardian, April 8, 2022
We will fight them on the
beaches we will fight them in
the sandbox these tiny
terrorists, the little boys
with nail polish, a spangly pony
and a special Barbie.
We have God on our side
He who surely must have sanctified
the hand of the doctor filling out
the birth certificate. We have
George Orwell on our side to
inspire our marketing team.
We’ll call it de-nazification, no,
we’ll call it parental support, no,
wait, we’ll call it The Vulnerable Child
Compassion and Protection Act.
No more shelter in the demilitarized
school nurse’s office. We’ll make It a crime
to slow the inexorable hands of time
bringing forth an unwanted body.
In this holy war
No prisoners are too small.
Eileen Ivey Sirota is a psychotherapist and a poet. Her chapbook Out of Order was published by Finishing Line Press in 2020. Her poems have been published in District Lines, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Lighten Up, The New Verse News, Ekphrastic Review, The Poeming Pigeon, Calyx, and Voices: The Art and Science of Psychotherapy. She lives in Bethesda, MD with her husband and an ever-shifting blend of rage and wonder.
Surveillance video shows a Black 17-year-old struggling with staff at a Wichita juvenile center last fall before his death, which followed being restrained facedown for more than 30 minutes. Late on Friday [January 21, 2022], Sedgwick county released 18 video clips of what happened before Cedric Lofton (AP photo above) was rushed to a hospital on 24 September. He died two days later. The release of the clips followed the announcement by the Sedgwick county district attorney, Marc Bennett, that the Kansas “stand-your-ground” law prevented him from pressing charges because staff members were protecting themselves. Bennett said he struggled with whether an involuntary manslaughter charge was justified, but concluded it was not. Sedgwick county’s webpage crashed after the video was posted. —The Guardian, January 22, 2022. Videos are available at The Wichita Eagle.
what can grow
in this salty pool
that does not bring back
a single Emmett or Ahmaud
that does not cleanse
so much as one tainted tree
this sterile balm
useless as nipples on a tomcat:
white woman tears
Eileen Ivey Sirota is a poet and psychotherapist, the author of a chapbook, Out of Order, published by Finishing Line Press in 2020. Her poems have also appeared in Calyx, Ekphrastic Review, District Lines, The New Verse News, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and Voices: The Art and Science of Psychotherapy.
About 100 people, many of them Native Americans, held a protest in Pierre in September to push for improved teaching of Native American history and culture in South Dakota schools and to decry removal of Native references from proposed social studies standards. Photo: Courtesy DRG Media Group via Kelo, November 14, 2021.
All the white pages lovely, unspoiled
by time, untouched by torment.
All aboard.
An uninterrupted arc of progress.
Heroes on horseback. See Dick and Jane
in their triumphant ignorance.
We have torn you
from our history books, those fairy tales
for innocents and children.
Unseen and unheard are the children we ripped
from their mothers, sent away
to boarding schools to be laundered
and whitened, their mother tongue ripped out.
“Kill the Indian and save the man,” proclaimed Richard Pratt.
Eileen Ivey Sirota is a poet and psychotherapist, the author of a chapbook, Out of Order, published by Finishing Line Press in 2020. Her poems also have appeared in Calyx, Ekphrastic Review, District Lines, The New Verse News, and Beltway Poetry Quarterly.
