AT THE DEMONSTRATION

by Pepper Trail

fiftyfifty.one

I am walking through the rain
To a demonstration, to live up to myself
My daily statement—
People should be taking to the streets –
So, today, I am
 
Far from the center of power
We line our homely avenue
Photograph each other
Do our duty, raise our ragged chants
Do not consent
 
A lifetime ago, my friends and I
Gleefully taunted the college-town cops
Proud in their polished riot gear
Ran through tear gas
On our feet the wings of victory
Of belief in victory
 
Past our days of feral joy
We gather now for warmth
To greet each other beneath the sky
Leaning in, shoulder to shoulder
Together, we disbelieve the news, the daily news
Deny that our country is what it is
Again

Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.

RIFFS ON "POETRY MAKES NOTHING HAPPEN"

by John Minczeski

"poetry makes nothing happen"

—W. H. Auden, "In Memory of W. B. Yeats"

Some nights, like this one, something  

thuds against the house, a tennis ball or branch  

from the shrub below our bedroom window.  

  

Poetry makes nothing happen.  

I mean, we lie awake   

as a bitter wind slashes at the house.   

  

We have no need to shelter in a mosque or subway,   

but still my heart aches. Poetry makes nothing   

happen. It could be a deer  

  

that got into fermented crabapples.  

It could be a deer gnawing the shrub  

below the window. Some windows  

  

crack from the cold. Some explode.  

Poetry makes nothing happen  

and life goes on as if there’s no bounty  

  

on our ordinary world. Remember when the oracle  

said a great general would win the battle?   

The moon continues its unhurried changes  

  

as it has in the small forever of my life.  

It makes nothing happen, poetry. Skin cracks  

in the cold, like a tax on breathing.  

  

Stepping inside to instant warmth  

from the wind, we tell each other  

what we already know about brutality   

  

and winter. Once again poetry has made   

nothing happen. People go on dying daily  

for lack/ of what is found there.   

John Minczeski is the author of A Letter to Serafin and other collections. Recent poems have appeared in Tampa Review, The New Yorker, Harvard Review, Cider Press Review, Bear Review, North Dakota Review, and elsewhere. 

ON READING ANOTHER OF YOUR POEMS TODAY

by Earl J Wilcox

When I see
one of your news
poems
I imagine it
being read aloud
by a good reader—
one who does not
mangle words
or pause when
your line doesn’t,
a reader who
helps your words
light up the page,
clarify what you
mean, words
that sing to me,
prompt or
provoke me.
Most of all,
your poems
warm me up
on a cold day,
fill me up
with happiness.
Even though
I can barely see
the screen nowadays,
I can enlarge words,
make them
big as the heart
I feel is behind
your poems.


Earl J Wilcox says loss of primary sight challenges writers to keep going and writing and reading every day. The news is too important to do less, he believes.