From a Poet who suffered child abuse

To Be Human is to Sing Your Own Song

Everything I can think of that my parents

Thought or did I don’t think and I don’t do.

I opened windows, they shut them. I pulled

Open the curtains, they shut them. If you

Get my drift. Of course there were some

Similarities---they wanted to be happy and

They weren’t. I wanted to be Shelley and I

Wasn’t. I don’t mean I didn’t have to avoid

Imitation, the gloom was pretty heavy. But

Then, for me, there was the forest, where

They didn’t exist. And the fields. Where I

Learned about birds and other sweet tidbits

Of existence. The song sparrow, for example.

In the song sparrow’s nest the nestlings,

Those who would sing eventually, must listen

Carefully to the father bird as he sings

And make their own song in imitation of his.

I don’t know if any other bird does this (in

Nature’s way has to do this). But I know a

Child doesn’t have to. Doesn’t have to.

Doesn’t have to. And I didn’t.

Mary Oliver

“The Moon is Trans”

The moon is trans.

From this moment forward, the moon is trans.

You don’t get to write about the moon anymore unless you respect that.

You don’t get to talk to the moon anymore unless you use her correct pronouns.

You don’t get to send men to the moon anymore unless their job is

to bow down before her and apologize for the sins of the earth.

She is waiting for you, pulling at you softly,

telling you to shut the fuck up already please.

Scientists theorize the moon was once a part of the earth

that broke off when another planet struck it.

Eve came from Adam’s rib.

Etc.

Do you believe in the power of not listening

to the inside of your own head?

I believe in the power of you not listening

to the inside of your own head.

This is all upside down.

We should be talking about the ways that blood

is similar to the part of outer space between the earth and the moon

but we’re busy drawing it instead.

The moon is often described as dead, though she is very much alive.

The moon has not known the feeling of not wanting to be dead

for any extended period of time

in all of her existence, but

she is not delicate and she is not weak.

She is constantly moving away from you the only way she can.

She never turns her face from you because of what you might do.

She will outlive everything you know.

~ Joshua Jennifer Espinoza, via PEN America

Forbidden Love

If it is a Sin then let me be damned

Forsaken love; tragic tale

A glance at heaven; an everlasting hell

No woes for her and I

A single kiss; a long good bye

Look down upon us with contempt

But no crime or fault was at hand

An act of love and our laments

I am me and she is she

Strip us down at what are we

Beyond this earth, one and same

Far beyond and there it came

Truth be spoken tragic heroes

Reality broken and revelation

Martyrs of love forbidden

A cause a fight and one big movement

And You as witness

Shall see that love is love

No matter what

Forever more she was mine

Never more she was taken

Days and nights I weep

A chance to break such laws

And unite in blessed matrimony

But a bride for a bride and a man for a man

Is a devil’s doing You say

Then cast me from grace

Let me live eternal happiness in eternal suffering

And You shall see that is You who will repent

For the cruelty You put upon your children in the end

---- MGarciaH

A Small Needful Fact

Is that Eric Garner worked

for some time for the Parks and Rec.

Horticultural Department, which means,

perhaps, that with his very large hands,

perhaps, in all likelihood,

he put gently into the earth

some plants which, most likely,

some of them, in all likelihood,

continue to grow, continue

to do what such plants do, like house

and feed small and necessary creatures,

like being pleasant to touch and smell,

like converting sunlight

into food, like making it easier

for us to breathe.--- Ross Gay

I Can’t Breathe

Pamela Sneed

I suppose I should place them under separate files

Both died from different circumstances kind of, one from HIV AIDS and possibly not having

taken his medicines

the other from COVID-19 coupled with

complications from an underlying HIV status

In each case their deaths may have been preventable if one had taken his meds and the

hospital thought to treat the other

instead of sending him home saying, He wasn’t sick enough

he died a few days later

They were both mountains of men

dark black beautiful gay men

both more than six feet tall fierce and way ahead of their time

One’s drag persona was Wonder Woman and the other started a black fashion magazine

He also liked poetry

They both knew each other from the same club scene we all grew up in

When I was working the door at a club one frequented

He would always say to me haven’t they figured out you’re a star yet

And years ago bartending with the other when I complained about certain people and

treatment he said sounds like it’s time for you to clean house

Both I know were proud of me the poet star stayed true to my roots

I guess what stands out to me is that they both were

gay black mountains of men

Cut down

Felled too early

And it makes me think the biggest and blackest are almost always more vulnerable

My white friend speculates why the doctors sent one home

If he had enough antibodies

Did they not know his HIV status

She approaches it rationally

removed from race as if there were any rationale for sending him home

Still she credits the doctors for thinking it through

But I speculate they saw a big black man before them

Maybe they couldn’t imagine him weak

Maybe because of his size color class they imagined him strong

said he’s okay

Which happened to me so many times

Once when I’d been hospitalized at the same time as a white girl

she had pig-tails

we had the same thing but I saw how tenderly they treated her

Or knowing so many times in the medical system I would never have been treated so terribly if I

had had a man with me

Or if I were white and entitled enough to sue

Both deaths could have been prevented both were almost first to fall in this season of death

But it reminds me of what I said after Eric Garner a large black man was strangled to death over

some cigarettes

Six cops took him down

His famous lines were I can’t breathe

so if we are always the threat

To whom or where do we turn for protection?

Pamela Sneed.

This Is Not a Small Voice

Sonia Sanchez -

This is not a small voice

you hear this is a large

voice coming out of these cities.

This is the voice of LaTanya.

Kadesha. Shaniqua. This

is the voice of Antoine.

Darryl. Shaquille.

Running over waters

navigating the hallways

of our schools spilling out

on the corners of our cities and

no epitaphs spill out of their river mouths.

This is not a small love

you hear this is a large

love, a passion for kissing learning

on its face.

This is a love that crowns the feet with hands

that nourishes, conceives, feels the water sails

mends the children,

folds them inside our history where they

toast more than the flesh

where they suck the bones of the alphabet

and spit out closed vowels.

This is a love colored with iron and lace.

This is a love initialed Black Genius.

This is not a small voice

you hear.

Sonia Sanchez

Ego Tripping

Nikki Giovanni -

I was born in the congo

I walked to the fertile crescent and built

the sphinx

I designed a pyramid so tough that a star

that only glows every one hundred years falls

into the center giving divine perfect light

I am bad

I sat on the throne

drinking nectar with allah

I got hot and sent an ice age to europe

to cool my thirst

My oldest daughter is nefertiti

the tears from my birth pains

created the nile

I am a beautiful woman

I gazed on the forest and burned

out the sahara desert

with a packet of goat's meat

and a change of clothes

I crossed it in two hours

I am a gazelle so swift

so swift you can't catch me

For a birthday present when he was three

I gave my son hannibal an elephant

He gave me rome for mother's day

My strength flows ever on

My son noah built new/ark and

I stood proudly at the helm

as we sailed on a soft summer day

I turned myself into myself and was

jesus

men intone my loving name

All praises All praises

I am the one who would save

I sowed diamonds in my back yard

My bowels deliver uranium

the filings from my fingernails are

semi-precious jewels

On a trip north

I caught a cold and blew

My nose giving oil to the arab world

I am so hip even my errors are correct

I sailed west to reach east and had to round off

the earth as I went

The hair from my head thinned and gold was laid

across three continents

I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal

I cannot be comprehended

except by my permission

I mean . . . I . . . can fly

like a bird in the sky . . .

Nikki Giovanni.

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

By Langston Hughes

I’ve known rivers:

I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

TECUMSEH

Where are the Shawnee now?

Do you know? Or would you have to

Write to Washington, and even then,

Whatever they said,

Would you believe it? Sometimes

I would like to paint my body red and go out into

The glitter snow

To die.

His name meant Shooting Star.

From Mad River country north to the border

He gathered the tribes

And armed them one more time. He vowed

To keep Ohio and it took him

over twenty years to fail.

After the bloody and final fighting, at Thames,

It was over, except

His body could not be found.

It was never found,

And you can do whatever you want with that, say

His people came in the black leaves of the night

And hauled him to a secret grave, or that

He turned into a little boy again, and leaped

Into a birch canoe and went

Rowing home down the rivers. Anyway,

This much I’m sure of: if we ever meet him, we’ll know it,

He will still be

So angry.

----Mary Oliver

On the Hills of Dawn

Alexander Posey

Behold, the morning-glory’s sky-blue cup

Is mine wherewith to drink the nectar up

That morning spills of silver dew,

And song upon the winds that woo

And sigh their vows

Among the boughs!

Behold, I’m rich in diamonds rare,

And pearls, and breathe a golden air;

My room is filled with shattered beams

Of light; my life is one of dreams,

In my hut on

The hills of dawn.

Native American Experience

By Esther Belin

I.

And Coyote struts down East 14th

feeling good

looking good

feeling the brown

melting into the brown that loiters

rapping with the brown in front of the Native American Health Center

talking that talk

of relocation from tribal nation

of recent immigration to the place some call the United States

home to many dislocated funky brown

ironic immigration

more accurate tribal nation to tribal nation

and Coyote sprinkles corn pollen in the four directions

to thank the tribal people

indigenous to what some call the state of California

the city of Oakland

for allowing use of their land.

II.

And Coyote travels by Greyhound from Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA thru

Dinétah

to Oakland, California, USA

laughing

Interstate 40 is cluttered with RVs from as far away as Maine

traveling and traveling

to perpetuate the myth

Coyote kicks back for most of the ride

amused by the constant herd of tourists

amazed by the mythic Indian they create

at a pit stop in Winslow

Coyote trades a worn beaded cigarette lighter for roasted corn

from a middle-aged Navajo woman squatting

in front of a store

and Coyote squats alongside the woman

talking that talk

of bordertown blues

of reservation discrimination

blues-ing on the brown vibe

a bilagáana snaps a photo

the Navajo woman stands

holding out her hand

requesting some of her soul back

instead

she replaces her soul with a worn picture of George Washington on a dollar bill

and Coyote starts on another ear of corn

climbing onto the Greyhound

the woman

still squatting

waiting

tired of learning not to want

waits there for the return of all her pieces.

III.

And Coyote wanders

right into a Ponca sitting at the Fruitvale Bart station

next to the Ponca is a Seminole

Coyote struts up to the two

“Where ya’all from?”

the Ponca replies

“Oooklahooma”

pause

the Seminole silent watches a rush of people climb in and out of the train

headed for Fremont

the Seminole stretches his arms up and back stiff from the wooden benches

pause

he pushes his lips out toward the Ponca slowly gesturing that he too is from Oklahoma

Coyote wanders

“where ’bouts?”

the Ponca replies

“Ponnca City”

pause

the Seminole replies

“Seminoole”

Coyote gestures to the Ponca

“You Ponca?”

the Ponca nods his head in affirmation

Coyote nods his head in content

to the Seminole

Coyote asks

“You Seminole?”

pause

the Seminole now watching some kids eating frozen fruit bars

nods his head

and Coyote shares his smokes with the two

and ten minutes later

they travel together on the Richmond train

headed for Wednesday night dinner at the Intertribal Friendship House.

IV.

And Coyote blues-ing on the urban brown funk vibe

wanders

in and out of existence

tasting the brown

rusty at times

worn bitter from relocation.

Poetry & Protest: Native American Indian Heritage Month

The Solitude of Self (excerpt)

1892

The point I wish plainly to bring before you on this occasion is the individuality of each human soul. . . . ​In discussing the rights of woman, we are to consider, first, what belongs to her as an individual, in a world of her own. . . .

The strongest reason for giving woman all the opportunities for higher education, for the full development of her faculties . . . ; for giving her the most enlarged freedom of thought and action; a complete emancipation from all forms of bondage, of custom, dependence, superstition; from all the crippling influences of fear, is the solitude and personal responsibility of her own individual life. The strongest reason why we ask for woman a voice in the government under which she lives; in the religion she is asked to believe; equality in social life, where she is the chief factor; a place in the trades and professions, where she may earn her bread, is because of her birthright to self-​sovereignty; because, as an individual, she must rely on herself. No matter how much women prefer to lean, to be protected and supported, nor how much men desire to have them do so, they must make the voyage of life alone. . . . ​It matters not whether the solitary voyager is man or woman. . . . ​Alike amid the greatest triumphs and darkest tragedies of life we walk alone. . . .

In [old] age, when the pleasures of youth are passed, children grown up, married and gone, the hurry and hustle of life in a measure over, when the hands are weary of active service, when the old armchair and the fireside are the chosen resorts, then men and women alike must fall back on their own resources. . . .

If from a lifelong participation in public affairs a woman feels responsible for the laws regulating our system of education, the discipline of our jails and prisons, the sanitary conditions of our private homes, public buildings, and thoroughfares, an interest in commerce, finance, our foreign relations, in any or all of these questions, her solitude will at least be respectable. . . .

Seeing then that the responsibilities of life rests equally on man and woman, that their destiny is the same, they need the same preparation for time and eternity. The talk of sheltering woman from the fierce storms of life is the sheerest mockery, for they beat on her from every point of the compass, just as they do on man, and with more fatal results, for he has been trained to protect himself, to resist, to conquer. . . . ​Whatever the theories may be of woman’s dependence on man, in the supreme moments of her life he cannot bear her burdens. . . .

[T]here is a solitude, which each and every one of us has always carried with him, more inaccessible than the ice-​cold mountains, more profound than the midnight sea; the solitude of self. Our inner being, which we call ourself, no eye nor touch of man or angel has ever pierced. . . . ​Who, I ask you, can take, dare take, on himself the rights, the duties, the responsibilities of another human soul?

Source: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “The Solitude of Self,” address delivered before the Committee of the Judiciary of the United States Congress, January 18, 1892. The Library of Congress.

The Rights of Women: An American Feminist Voice

Throughout the nineteenth century, debates about the rights of women echoed loudly across Europe, North America, and beyond. Among the most well-known and eloquent appeals for these rights came from the American feminist leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) in an 1892 address to a U.S. congressional committee. She was urging then, as she had for decades, an amendment to the Constitution giving women the right to vote. That effort was finally successful in 1920, almost two decades after Stanton died.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Woman, Life, Freedom

Long live the revolutionary movement in Iran:

Manifesto of the leftist solidarity movement in Austria

Since the brutal murder of Jina (Mahsa) Amini by the so-called morality police in Iran, a broad movement has spread across the country that has shaken up one of the most repressive regimes in the world. It is no exaggeration to speak of a revolutionary movement, led by women, students, youth. Scenes of women and men burning hijabs together, students fearlessly throwing representatives of the regime out of their schools, workers going on strike, students staging daily rallies, have all deeply inspired us.

The regime has responded with extreme brutality. The average age of those arrested is 15 years old. Political prisoners were in serious danger in the Evin Prison fire. Students have "disappeared”. School students are being arrested in their classrooms. From Kurdistan to Baluchesten, the regime has carried out massacres that have turned hundreds more Jinas into symbols of the movements. In spite of all this, the masses have not been stopped. This movement has the potential not only to bring down the Iranian regime, but also to spread throughout the region. We see this in an impressive way in Afghanistan, where there have been ongoing protests by women and girls against the Taliban for months. The movements will increasingly inspire each other and in turn encourage others.

This movement hits the regime at key pillars: The oppression of women & LGBTQI+ people, discrimination against all ethnic, religious and national minorities. The struggle for women's rights, democratic rights, the right to self-determination and bodily autonomy is at the heart of a movement that is directed against the entire dictatorial, repressive regime and system. Mandatory wearing of hijabs was one of the first measures introduced by the mullahs' regime - women have protested it from the beginning. They took to the streets in numbers on International Women's Day in 1979 against the threat of the mullahs taking power and curtailing their rights.

For decades, the regime has used its reactionary ideology to control women and LGBTQI+ people and their bodies, pushing them into family isolation, brutally exploiting them, dividing the population, and thus stabilizing the regime’s power. This ideology has been falling apart for a long time, and now this process has reached a new quality. An entire generation is radically turning away from religious institutions and are no longer tolerating the deep-seated misogyny, the violence and the all-encompassing oppression.

It is about much more than the abolition of misogynistic dress codes: it is about equal rights, full autonomy over one's own body, access to jobs, health care and an independent life. It is about abolishing all repression and the security apparatus - from the morality police to the Revolutionary Guards. From the corrupt mullahs to the violent police.