a.
How did I ever make beds
before making babies;
or make anything at all,
How do we get up when shootings will
lay us back down, lay us back down
to wear the dirt socks; in pine –
cut down dark and quiet forests
(feller-bunched)
b.
How do racists go on air and say
hello and please and thank-you?
In talcum power plays;
auto-silencer-trigger-thingamajiggies
without-even-a-human-finger-
touching-them-once
Or listen to the
breathless ones, singing songs
of the breathing ones:
Big Green Tractor
Burnin’ It Down.
They Don’t Know
Why –
When people still walk with feet
attached to limbs, yell for help with
their mouths (feller-bunched)
Messy and covered in –
c.
How do they lie like this
We were free people once –
walking to town,
no cars around to run us down –
(feller-bunched)
Don’t tread on me with your Michelins;
we had our own souls to trade upward
dark red; honest dirt of our ancestors –
Who did not spray tan /
gamble-rat /
ruff us up /
fluffed up tweeting /
POTUS: the largest of the Angry Birds.
d.
We had arthritic bones from farming;
from suffering;
Not typing on and on quietly like this –
in my room of pine
(feller-bunched) –
All around here, it’s lingering…
the smell of gunpowder, and cowering.
Elisabeth Horan is a poet and mother from Vermont. She writes to let others know they are not alone in their struggles with mental illness and disability. She has work at Milk + Beans, Writer’s Resist, The Mad River, formercactus, Feminine Collective and many other wonderful places you enjoy. @ehoranpoet & ehoranpoet.com
