PINK

by Sandra Anfang

I didn’t think they’d do it

I thought it was a bluff.

 

Fifty years of progress

and the promise of more 

wrung like rags and tossed away.

 

Metal hanger signs dot the crowd. 

Bitter copper paints my tongue.

 

Red tears defile our cheeks

divide us into stars and stripes.

Iodine and salt set the stain

 

as the monthly blood of women 

swirls in pinwheel patterns

 

down the snowy drains

of smug old men who mock

our mock democracy.

 

Is that Sisyphus ahead

pushing his bloody burden up the hill

of fat white lies? Senators puff stogies

 

turn on their heels to leer as the

pageant of female flesh flows by

 

shouting, pumping fists and rage

marching in our pink pussy hats.

 

I can see from their lewd smiles

that this is entertainment of the

you look pretty when you’re angry kind.

 

It’s time to take a knee, sisters, every time

that cursed pledge is mouthed.

 

With liberty and justice for all we stand

united, ready to lift each other up.

We are at your cervix, America.

Author’s Note: My small town held a rally and march on Saturday that attracted hundreds of protestors, including many men and children. I'm holding the big sign in the photo by Beth Schlanker in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, with my ninety-year-old friend.

 

Sandra Anfang is a California poet, teacher, and artist. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals including Rattle, The New Verse News, The MacGuffin, and Spillway. Her poetry collections include Looking Glass Heart (Finishing Line Press, 2016), Road Worrier (Finishing Line Press, 2018), and Xylem Highway (Main Street Rag, 2019). Kelsay Books will publish her chapbook Finishing School in early 2023. She’s been nominated for a Best Short Fictions award, Best of the Net, and a Pushcart Prize. Anfang is founder and host of the monthly series, Rivertown Poets (established 2013), and a poetry teacher in the schools.

PROFESSIONS DURING OUR WORLD'S CORONAVIRUS CRISIS

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman

Coalition for the Homeless

                there are thousands of gaping holes now
                and there will be too many more
                spaces once filled with art music love
                such a long list of griefs
                a census list too long
                doctors
                nurses
                parents
                friends
                priests
                                     sisters
                          as well as the other invisible
                                     hospital cleanup crews
                sanitation workers
                                     truckers
                stock boys
                cashiers of every stripe
                then there is the government’s own:
                the workers of neither rain or shine
                delivering our mail
                                     those who served
                                     the never counted away invisible
                the homeless addicts prisoners . . .
                each and every empty space
                a sterling silver invitation
                a call  a challenge
                to those who will come after
                                     to fill these gaping holes
                with the sacred earth of their lives

Sister Lou Ella Hickman, I.W.B.S. is a certified spiritual director whose poems and articles have appeared in numerous magazines and journals as well as four anthologies. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless (Press 53) was published in 2015.