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Tag Archives: my poems
“Don’t ever waste time reading crappy poetry” – An Interview with Elliot batTzedek
To All of the Middle-class White Christian Women
To All of the Middle-class White Christian Women
Who Occasionally Consider Your Privilege:
Now you’re talkin about
owning your racism
and owning your classism
and owning your anti-Semitism
and owning your lesbophobia
and I’m supposed to be impressed
and the question I’ve got for you
is just how you plan
to pay for all this stuff you’re owning?
will you use your checking plus account
or cash in a CD
or get the money from daddy
or put it on your VISA?
and what happens
when all of this stuff you’re owning
gets a little old
and out of fashion?
what happens when you go to find something
new and improved
something that works easier
for you?
What then?
You just gonna pitch this stuff?
or you gonna try to sell it
back to us
packaged as our own desire
and try to make a profit for yourselves
in the process?
found in file, undated, probably from 1989 or 1990
Bringing Poetry Off the Page
I’m fascinated by all creative ways writers and artists are using poetry now. Folks are making jewelry, clothing and fabric art, cards and paper art, painting, photographs, and more. I love bringing poetry off the page and into the material world of our daily lives.
A good friend just moved away from Philly, and a group got together to give her a set of Shabbat necessities so their communal shabbos dinners would go with her. They ordered a custom-engraved wood challah tray with a piece of liturgy I created for Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah.
Look how beautiful!
On a day like today my rider and I
On a day like today my rider and I could
canter could canter could canter could canter
for miles for miles for miles for miles
in the sun in the sun in the sun
Review of “Women Write Resistance” up at BroadBlogs
A thoughtful review of the anthology Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence was just posted on BroadBlogs: Women Write Resistance to Violence
Interview on Poetry as Transformation up at Menacing Hedge
Menacing Hedge features mini-interviews with Women Write Resistance poets Kathleen Aguero, Elliott batTzedek, Ann Bracken, Maria Luisa Arroyo and their WWR poems. http://www.menacinghedge.com/summer2013/interview-wwr.php
“If at the end of a poem you are who you were when you started the poem you have not dared to dwell in poetry nor dared to let poetry dwell in you.” – Elliott batTzedek
NaPoMo 30 – In class I learned about
In class I learned about
In class I learned about
class, how all my professors
had all of their fingers
No table-sawed tips
no thumbs numbed under two tons
of crates of Miracle Whip and now dangling
uselessly.
So many lower arms none
having been lost to the second of
having not remembered not to grab the nut
as it slipped into the combine feed
A hook for a hand—be teased
for decades, but no kids ran in fear
of so common place a horror
How easy in class to assume Latin
professors had no fingerprints for they gestured softly with
no soil embedded, permanent tattoos
their finger swirls never fresh-plowed fields
What kind of a life leaves a man’s hands whole?
Hands uncallused, filed clear fingernails,
skin not red and broken by a cold wet wind?
NaPoMo 25 – Weaponized
Weaponized
Castor beans morning glories almond tea weaponized
orange juice niacin daffodils weaponized
kitten breath, plough shares, emory boards weaponized
sliding boards, Bic pens, warm bed, kitchen knives weapon-
ized booby prize, bedroom eyes, pasturized weaponized
Tylenol, bandaids, birth control, self-control,
out of control, outer space, quiet space weaponized
childhood weaponized embroidery weaponized fur-
niture weaponized straw weapon Coke weapon eye-
glass drinking glass stained glass looking glass weapons
now, now weaponizing beauty bars hair styles style
guides guide books travel plans passports airports car ports
team sports steam ports steam punk old junk deep funk wea-
ponized planet: water earth fire air we-
NaPoMo 24 – Alternative Means
(a poem found in this article: Texas executes mentally impaired inmate)
Alternative Means
After the European Union banned
the export last year
of the barbituric acids regularly
used in a three-drug, three-drug, three-drug
cocktail favored by American
prisons, officials
in the States were forced to
find alternative means
of executing
their
inmates.
In september, authorities in Florida (land
of sweetly juicely Disneyly illusion)
used pentobarbital to kill
a death row inmate, despite pleas
from the drug’s manufacturer that demanded
otherwise.
to a single dose of
Nembutal – the product name of pentobarbital – Mr.
Hearn’s execution cost
the state $1,286 and 86, 86, 86 cents (who in the executioner’s
realm calculates the exact cents?)
instead of the $84
.55
for a three-drug three-drug three-drug
cocktail.
This Frenzy 