Tag: chile

poetry

other people’s problems

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other people’s problems

how am I harmed
by caged children
sleeping on floors?

how am I affected
by coal miners
ordered to dig more
while koalas burn?

how am I bothered
by the mother detained
at the airport
once the rules changed?

how am I inconvenienced
by the grandmother
cast off the voter rolls?

how am I troubled
by the appointed agency head
whose goal is
to dismantle the agency?

how am I damaged
by a man who grabs women
and gets elected
then appoints men who grab women
to be judges in the courts
where men who grab women
get off?

how am I diminished
when one boss
earns in one minute
more than three times
what a worker makes in a year?
and now that boss will keep more
while the workers keep less?

these are other people’s problems
not mine
my only worry is
I’m losing my humanity

poetry

a poet paying taxes

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a poet paying taxes

it’s time to add up every pen and pencil
notebook business card visor
from the last year
what did I use to make what I made?
then I’ll pay my town their tiny portion

I don’t mind the tithe –
it’s the terrible reckoning,
weighing what little went in versus out,
reading the silent critical subtext
embedded in the unassailably impartial numbers;
it’s the unflattering appraisal
of the value of my time
here –

that’s what I’m avoiding tonight
wrapped in a wool blanket
with the laptop decidedly closed

maybe tomorrow I’ll have the strength
to add the columns up
or rather
subtract what it all cost me

poetry

home

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home

a place we unpack
where there’s more than one key
and these strangers may be neighbors
there’s a rhythm and a knowing
of what comes next
at the grocery store
we can buy family-sized food
and next week’s events
on the notice board mean something
it’s a place to hang up our packs
for a spell
and dream about the same vista
for more than one night

poetry

Limbaugh

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Limbaugh

O, America
how you reward
the most vile of men
and how I want
to finally quit you

all us women
battered by the words
of these irredeemable
powerful men –
we must leave

if you think
it can’t get worse, it will
it’s time to find a place
where people are calm and kind

we must up and go now
and take all our sisters
(and, yes, the moral men, too)
with us

we’ll just walk out
and leave the dishes in the sink –
leave them the mess of
guns and banks and greed –
until they’ve stolen it all from each other
and shot every living thing dead

then someday
when the coasts are finally clear
if the land calls loud enough
we may return

poetry

coronavirus: prejudice gone viral

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coronavirus: prejudice gone viral

the man sits next to me
and I can’t help but notice
his Asian features
and the surgical mask
concealing his smile

I grimace hello
and he manages nice to meet you
I hear him talking to his friend across the aisle
in what might be Mandarin or Cantonese
although Korean or Japanese are equally possible
all I know is
they are words without resonance for me
with no cognates I can catch
and wring some meaning from
we settle in for ten hours
and his hacking cough makes an entrance

this is the worst-case scenario I think
(except for the mask, I suppose)
and I pass around the hand sanitizer feverishly
fear spreads like phages multiplying
and I inch my right arm away from his left –
it didn’t even start with the sickness, though,
this unbidden Chinese antipathy

at home, planning the trip,
we heard on and on
about their hunger for any creature
ground into powder
resources drained from around the globe
to fuel an empire
when I see the big tour groups
all the women sporting nondescript bobs
their leader invariably clutching a metal stick
with a grubby stuffy on the end
I give them a wide berth

at the Māori cultural program they shuffled along
ignoring the performers’ questions and directions –
because they didn’t understand!
I must actively remind myself now
feeling the slip toward stereotypes and judgement

I’m horrified by my own wave of aversion
how my lens warps
just how easy I am to fool
how quickly I can see
someone else as other