By: Karin Spitfire
Danger (after Layli Long Soldier and the UCC resolution process)
Whereas
I live sixteen years from infancy to sweet
With a man’s whose rage ran high
Every 5 p.m., every week end,
Every turn of the season
Ran loud, voice above decibels
An ear could retract from
Fist raised once, in a good week
Belt off at least monthly
And the psychotic breaks
Random, yearly, Pearl Harbor,
V.J. Day, hunting season, Spring
Therefore
I know how to live in danger,
watch, wait, placate, run, hide,
know danger better than I know myself
Whereas
That is what I learned,
and because Mommy, busy with the boys,
was finally able to follow Dr. Spock’s
advice “to leave em cry.”
It was him, intolerant
and triggered by my desperate crying
Who swept me up out of the crib
Therefore
I learned this was love
Whereas
I learned this
I brought home danger
I treated who I brought home as danger
Therefore
I could watch it
Whereas
I learned not to do this
Therefore
I live alone with my art
Whereas
The danger is now in the Whitehouse
And I cannot have the hope to just wait
‘til I grow up
to escape
Therefore
Last week I thought I would sell my house and
Just go to Texas
Go straight to the danger
To save those babies
Whereas
He is amassing 7,000 troops
Therefore be it resolved
700,000 of us should
go
straight to the danger
I do not want to go alone
The distance between pink
A whole night, blue black indigo
whatever moon
icebergs lit by starlight
something shining in the ebony sea
A whole day, sky blue, blue grey
green fauna, red rock
sun stunning sparks of Caribbean blue, aquamarine , turquoise, teal
some kind of ice white and polar bears floating in the
navy black deep jaybird blue water
The whole sky
some kind of blue, the whole sea too,
blues to black greys
white caps, greenish hues
Despite the predominance of blue
the worship of all things yang
We rise and fall
we open and close
to the oooh ah of pink
Forgetting the dark dreams, or sweet slumber
putting down the day, the work day over
The morning quacking pink,
the pink dusk of peace
The distance between the pink,
forgettable daily
The pink itself, the mauves, fuchsias, cherry, adobe dust, claret, burgundy, peach, salmon,
coral, rose, flamingo,
Maroon our precious girls, our women
the carriers of the beginnings and the ends.
Others within
there is a wounded animal inside, drowning
chased from her home by creatures who build strangleholds stopping the river
others, down stream, flip flop in the mud
can no longer reach their breeding grounds.
where there were dry oak, low bush blueberry, rhododendron, voles, coons,
where there was mountain,
now the decapitated underside of the earths’ flayed skin
weeping arsenic.
inside there is a slow shy turtle
with a plastic six pack holder around her neck.
a pod of whales herding fish
scoop up mouthfuls of ziplock baggies.
where there were prairies,
bison, vegetation to eat
now great square ponds of poison water, putrid air,
gargantuan drills piercing the earth.
another wild one just comes down from the mountain
lives in the reedy swampy place behind the big y, k mart and the middle class houses
crosses the main street with three cubs, forages in trash cans.
she and her babies are a problem.
inside, the fierce memory of old Titans
who can climb down the bean stalk
crush the swollen spewing moguls
rescue the throngs of harrowed beings born in tent cities.
inside a wild animal birthed into a GI bill house
survived that cage, launched into the white free world to fend for herself
found others with weeping sores built enclaves carved out space avoided authority spat/
healed clawed/healed sang/healed breathed/healed gathered with others fought shook
spoke stood.
turned around to see the pollution and destruction of her family,
wounded hordes from microbe to mountaintop from gene pool to tide pool
and the fracking fires
fodder
there is an animal inside so nearly inconsolable
grateful, for now, to live where wild is enough to lick anguish, recalibrate breath
but the automatons come again or maybe it is just man and a tranq gun
who with all good intentions wants to mark her, count her numbers to see if she lives.
Karin Spitfire is the author of Standing with Trees and a chapbook “Wild Caught.” Her poem “Liquidation” won the national first place in the 2019 Joe Gouveia Outermost Poetry Contest, sponsored by WOMR, Provincetown. Her poems have appeared in 3 Nations Anthology, You Say. Say, on-line journals, Canary: A Literary Journal of the Environmental Crisis, The Catch: Writings from Downeast, Trivia: Voices of Feminism, and print journals, Off the Coast, The Aurorean, Rootdrinker, Currents, the Journal of Body Mind Centering. “What is to be Offered published in The Kerf, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She was the Poet Laureate of Belfast, Me in 2007 & 2008.
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