A MOUNTAINEER CAN BE A POET AND STILL FIRE A MUSKET

by Kim Malinowski

Hundreds of West Virginia University students wearing red T-shirts and bandanas to symbolize their connection to striking coal miners a century ago staged protests Monday against an administration proposal to cut 9% of majors amid a $45 million budget shortfall. —AP, August 22, 2023

I write WVU into the stars, blue and gold constellations,

my pen shimmering faculty names, even as the administration’s slash

tenure positions, promises, dreams.

I learned that my pen is a magic wand here. 

It has not been so long ago that even mountaineers could be poets

and still shoot muskets and pretend that they had a home.

I met a freshman today that I will paint as glinting diamond,

fourth day confusion, standing on the side with professors,

telling me he is the transition and the PRTs still don’t work.

But he doesn’t cower, ready to swing full into engineering and life.

My mentors are battle hardened past the traditional 10 on the Mohs scale,

fighting, worrying, fighting more. Not able to tell their stories.

I told the university’s president that I could write WVU into the skies,

either as diamonds or as coal, because each are rocks 

on their way to becoming another rock. That freshman, those faculty

can fight and worry and fight.

I can write the stories they are not allowed to.

But we have a choice if we want the story to be about diamonds or coal.

Kim Malinowski is a poet and a mountaineer. She will have six books by the end of 2024 and credits much of her success to her instructors at West Virginia University. She wore red at the August 21, 2023 Protest, lives five hours away, and fights for those that fought for her.

MY CANNOTS

by Kim Malinowski

I cannot say ban guns 

 

I cannot say ban assault rifles 

when the Uzi I fired at eight still thrums 

its song through my veins, the recoil still smacking muscle 

rifle stabled on rusty hood 

merging in fierce moment with those before me 

deep in warrior chant. 

 

I cannot cannot say ban assault rifles 

the morgue has seen enough mangled 

enough loved ones pointing at shirts that should be muddy 

not tie-dyed with blood. 

 

I cannot cannot cannot watch faces line up  

as if on the milk carton shelf 

rows of parents, rows of children, wives, lovers, husbands, police 

panic the pledge of allegiance 

 

I cannot cannot cannot 

 

cannot see plague 

 

when I prime flintlock, inherit ancestors’  

gunpowder  

  savor gritty aftertaste  

Kim Malinowski is a lover of words. Her collection Home was published by Kelsay Books and her chapbook Death: A Love Story was published by Flutter Press. She has three forthcoming verse novels. Her work has appeared in War, Literature, and the Arts, BOMBFIRE, S/tick, Mookychick, and others. Her work dictated that she become a political science defined rebel, advocating for listening and understanding of our individual and collective history and bringing it to the page. She writes because the alternative is unthinkable.