Thursday, February 2, 2017

Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience – JP Howard

Close up image of a microphone on a stage. The audience that is facing the microphone is blurred, appearing as a myriad of colors (red, white, green, yellow, etc.)
As the incoming administration builds its agenda of attack on marginalized people, on freedom of speech, on the earth itself, poetry will continue to be an essential voice of resistance. Poets will speak out in solidarity, united against hatred, systemic oppression, and violence and for justice, beauty, and community.
                
In this spirit, Split This Rock is offering its blog as a Virtual Open Mic. For the rest of this frightening month, January of 2017, we invite you to send us poems of resistance, power, and resilience.

We will post every poem we receive unless it is offensive (containing language that is derogatory toward marginalized groups, that belittles, uses hurtful stereotypes, explicitly condones or implies a call for violence, etc.). After the Virtual Open Mic closes, we hope to print out and mail all of the poems to the White House.

For guidelines on how to submit poems for this call, visit the Call for Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience blog post


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bedtime poem for america
By JP Howard

this body is black is blue is you
you a country i won’t ever trust
this country is foreign
this foreign is familiar
tastes almost like home
like mama’s peach cobbler gone bad

this blue is my body
this red is my blood
this blood tastes like home
these stars sewn on
black of my skin
shine when night comes

i wear this tattoo for you
america
spread your white sheets on my bed
tomorrow i will rip you to shreds

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Powerful, painfully emotionally stirring and uncompromising!

JP Howard said...

Thank you Lorraine!