by Ron Riekki
A Chinese artist, a Russian musician, and American poet,
and we talk about surveillance, sharing how dangerous it is
to be an artist, after speaking with a local who told us about
the tensions with Russia, how they're like a choking fog,
and the musician from Russia says it's all propaganda there,
says she doesn't care, that her voice will never be voiceless,
tells us about being taken in by the Russian police and how
she brutalized them with truth, was let go, and then let go
of her country, emigrating, immigrating, Euro-ricocheting around,
and hanging out with Pussy Riot, doing anti-war campaigns,
and we speak of the ten percent of the Russian population
being tortured, and she speaks of physical torture and
emotional torture and the torture of propaganda, and
the Chinese artist talks about holding up signs in Hong
Kong that were all white, not allowed to have signs with
actual words, so this haunting image, this effective image
of hundreds of artists and writers and protestors and students
holding up these white signs, ghost signs meant to haunt
politicians, and the American poet talks about being hunted
by the Trump administration for a pro-Islamic, pro-immigrant
tweet, how the administration administered paperwork to his
home, pages and pages and pages of warning, how watched
we are everywhere, he says, he thinks, he feels, and we are
near the Russian border, except it's shut down, too dangerous,
and here we are, doing art that is too dangerous, and having
this conversation that is too dangerous, so dangerous that
we turn off our phones to make sure we are not being listened
to, because we want to create the form of our words, rush
home and turn our conversations into lyrics and artwork
and this poem you are reading now, written near a border
that is rotting with worry, a border that lacks moonlight tonight.
Ron Riekki co-edited Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice.
