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REVIEW OF MEDUSA'S COUNTRY

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Michael T. Young's beautiful review of MEDUSA'S COUNTRY.


Aching toward Redemption: a review of Medusa’s Country by Larissa ShmailoSeptember 7, 2018
Reviewed by Michael T. YoungMedusa’s Country
by Larissa Shmailo
MadHat Press 
2016, 70 pages, $14.95, ISBN: 978-1941196380It’s been said that there are only two subjects in literature: love and death; Medusa’s Country is the battle between those primal forces. It’s no wonder that battle, and the country where it takes place, are hard given the power the eponymous figure is known for. As the poem “Schweinerei” says of the world, it is “hard, atrocious, and cruel”[i]And what makes the country of this collection especially so is that it is not fantasy, like medusa herself; but rather a steady look at the reality of our own world: a world of war, rape, suicide, where “life is real; and death the realest part” (28).But let’s delve more carefully, because such a description may give the false impression of depressing teenage verse, and the poetry of Medusa’s Country is far from that. It is rather the poetry of experience and not of innocence. It is a collection of incredibly intelligent and subtle poetry that never loses focus of its themes. It is a poetry that aches toward redemption even as it is bogged down by histories and impulses that cannot be undone. So between the transcendent and the incarnate there is a wrestling for justice.After torture and rape a child dies, finally;
The suffering of innocents, God’s gaping sore.
Still I pray daily, but I’m mad, you see. (31)The reach toward love, toward what transcends the pain and suffering of the world, results in an embodiment. That embodiment becomes a confinement, a trap, and thus a kind of failure. As Joseph Brodsky once said, “In poetry, as anywhere else, spiritual superiority is always disputed at the physical level”[ii]. Shmailo’s poems rage at the center of that dispute and thus the governing metaphors tend toward the claustrophobic and crippled.Your empty heart can’t know love’s blood at all.
You’ll be my heart, a numb, reflexive pleasure
to beat, half-heart, and never know full flexure. (21)Family history
is largely hysterical mystery.
This old cold sold blow hold on me
is moldy genealogy. (12)In that “love’s blood,” in that “reflexive pleasure,” that “moldy genealogy,” is a determinism that belies all effort to a transcendent love. And this makes that desire so painfully felt. I’m reminded, at times, of the aridity and emptiness that St. John of the Cross explores in Dark Night of the Soul. Shmailo, in longing to transcend the pain of the world, embraces a totality that inverts ordinary terms:I love love’s desert and its snow.
I, Shmailo, dervish, a lover signed. (51)Or as in the first footnote to “Between Eclipses” says, “It is not the grace of salvation you await, but the grace of no salvation” (10).At the end of the second section, the spiritual dispute surfaces as an aching for an end to the boundaries of the self. And this is where death and love seem to become almost indistinguishable. In the final section of a poem called “War,” we readMaybe as the last breath—will we know it as last?—as the last
breath goes, we—will we know any we?—we might feel another’s
dying breath that we might know someone else’s as we know our own
death. (38)In Eastern philosophy and on the subatomic level in science, the boundaries that separate us become tenuous. So, the final section, in the wake of this poem, enters realms of quantum physics and Hinduism.I’m the field of every being;
parts of me are parts of you. (47)This is me, it cries, this is me and I die.
We will all speak these words in this way
and then, and till then, what shall I say? (55)The final section from which these poems come is the collection’s supreme effort toward redemption. But love must ever return to its embodiment and, therefore, a kind of entrapment. Transcendence is not permanent but only part of a cycle.I will make love to you between rebirths
with penis and womb, with land and sea,
with wind and sun and death. (49)Buried within that sentence loaded with polysyndeton is the phrase, “I will make love to you . . . with. . . death.” If an orgasm is “le petite mort” one gets the sense from this collection that death is a “grande orgasme,” and the cycle of rebirth returns us to the desires of a body that can’t shake its history or primordial urges. As the collection concludes with the poem that gives the collection its name:The water will dry and will leave only dust;
I will feel no prick when it does.
The serpentine grass will cover my love
And green growth enshroud what was.But once a man stood like a statue
Before my cave of trees
His eyes transfixed by my serpents
That hardened, froze, and pleased. (56)Apart from that return to dust and resolving into bitter memory, it’s important to note the innuendo that plays through the lines, for Shmailo’s poetry is abundant with linguistic wit and wordplay. As here, “I will feel no prick as it does” simultaneously means “prick” as a penis and “prick” as a pang of grief or anguish. And that is equally part of the hardness learned by a hard life. It is forgiveness learned through pain, as in the poem “Rape,” where a footnote tells us:“Through the ability to understand how little you cared, I grew strong. I forgave and forgot you, like used toilet paper, flushed” (29).Sexual love and transcendent love become indistinguishable and so transcendence slips away and the harshness of the world crowds in. We are left with terrible longing. But also the beauty of the language, a beauty that has the power to transform the tragic into song.One of my personal favorite poems in the collection is “Live, Not Die; Live Not, Die.” It’s a marvelous variation on that unwieldy form, the sestina. But more than this, it is a poem of both linguistic and ideational play that is dreadfully serious. Springing off of Hamletand his ponderous question of existence, it goes on to weave in relevant references to Eliot and Marvell, and, of course, questions of love. The poem exemplifies the intelligence that pervades the collection in double-entendres, in deep engagements with literary figures like Nabokov, Tolstoy, or Lermontov, or in pressing literary forms into a painful service as when a limerick is used to talk about a crematorium in a death camp.It’s important to remember that medusa was once beautiful and was changed into a hideous creature by failing to keep her vows as a priestess of Athena. The pain and suffering traced through Medusa’s Countryare like a series of betrayals that results in a similar curse. The beauty that is written into the language, and painted into the cover art, are undeniable. But the world will not let beauty go untouched. It forces the hard choices, rendering them as compulsions of survival and so torturing the beautiful into the hideous.In the movement of poems from formal to free verse and back, there is a push against restraints both in theme and form. So Shmailo’s “Cardiac Ghazal” is written in iambic hexameter rather than the more common pentameter and her villanelle “Apostasy” resists any definite meter when scanned and yet the muscular character of the words and rhythms works well with the outrage of confronting the injustice of children raped and driven to suicide.If I find a disappointment anywhere in the book, it is only in the few moments of failed editing or formatting which falls on the publisher’s shoulders. So, there is a comma or period out of place on occasion and the opening comments by Steve Dalachinsky misquotes one of the poems in a significant way. But these are not, as I say, errors that are to be lain at the poet’s feet. No, in fact, if anything is to be lain at Shmailo’s feet it is the laurel of antiquity in recognition of her mastery as a poet.[i]Larissa Shmailo, Medusa’s Country(Asheville: MadHat Press, 2017), 34.[ii]Joseph Brodsky, Less Than One: Selected Essays(New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1986), 133.About the Reviewer: Michael T. Young‘s third full-length collection, The Infinite Doctrine of Water, was published by Terrapin Books. His chapbook, Living in the Counterpoint (Finishing Line Press), received the 2014 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award from the New England Poetry Club.  His other collections include The Beautiful Moment of Being Lost (Poets Wear Prada), Transcriptions of Daylight (Rattapallax Press), and Because the Wind Has Questions (Somers Rocks Press).  He received a fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the Chaffin Poetry Award.  His work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous print and online journals including The Cimarron ReviewThe Cortland ReviewEdison Literary Review, Lunch Ticket, The Potomac Review, and Valparaiso Poetry Review.  His work is also in the anthologies Phoenix Rising, Chance of a Ghost, In the Black/In the Red, and Rabbit Ears: TV Poems.  He lives with his wife and children in Jersey City, New Jersey.

All-Star Women Poets Read to Benefit Democratic Women Candidates

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For immediate releaseContact: Larissa Shmailo  larissa@larissashmailo.com 212-712-9865
ALL-STAR WOMEN POETS READ TO BENEFIT DEMOCRATIC PARTY 9/29Women poets read in support of Democrat women candidates
Cornelia Street Café29 Cornelia off BleeckerGreenwich Village, NYCSaturday, September 29, 6:00 – 7:15 pm$20 cover / $10 minimum
New York City — On September 29, as part of the global 100 Thousand Poets for Change initiative, seven leading New York City women poets will read to benefit the Democratic National Committee’s (Democrats.org) midterm election efforts. Proceeds will be earmarked for the campaigns of progressive women candidates and candidates in battleground states.All-Star Women Poets Read will feature Lee Ann Brown (In the Laurels, Caught; Polyverse); Elaine Equi (Ripple Effect: New and Selected Poems; Sentences and Rain); Rachel Hadas (“The Golden Road”; The Iphigenia Plays of Euripides - New Verse Translations); Patricia Spears Jones(A Lucent Fire: New & Selected Poems; Painkiller); Trace Peterson  (Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics; Collected Poems of Gil Ott); and Larissa Shmailo (Patient Women, Medusa’s Country), led by mistress of ceremonies Maggie Balistreri (The Evasion-English Dictionary Expanded Edition; A Balistreri Collection: abc poems).All-Star Women Poets Read will celebrate the growing role of women in political leadership today and send a message of #neverTrump to Republican anti-women agendas.  Voter registration information and volunteer opportunities to help Democratic midterm candidates will be distributed at the reading and a special message of support from district Congressman Jerrold Nadler will be read.All-Star Women Poets Read is part of the eighth annual global event, 100 Thousand Poets for Change (100TPC), a nonprofit, grassroots organization which brings communities together for sustainability and peace. This year’s events involve nearly 2,000 individuals and organizations and include a special initiative among families and in classrooms, “Read a Poem to a Child,” to highlight the importance and vulnerability of children.        All poems read at All-Star Women Poets Read and 100TPC will be archived at Stanford University.For more information, contact Larissa Shmailo (All-Star Women Poets Read) at 212-712-9865 or Michael Rothenberg (100TPC) at 305-753-4569.

Senator John McCain 1936-2018

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I was horrified at John McCain's bombing of the North Vietnamese people, but moved by how he stayed with his fellow captives for five years at the Hanoi Hilton, even when he was offered immediate release; I loathed his support of the NRA, but admired how he defended Obama as a good and decent man when one of his supporters called him an "Arab I don't trust"; I hated his support of Trump's tax giveaway, but honored his single-handed refusal to destroy ACA. In the time of Republican toadyism, I loved McCain's bipartisanship and the way he called Trump out on his bullshit. I would never have voted for him, but deeply grieve this honorable man. May the kingdom of heaven be his.

My sister Tamara

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Today would have been my sister Tamara's 70th birthday, had she lived. Five years have passed swiftly since the untimely death of my sibling, who supported me creatively, and, when I needed it, financially - the reason I called her "Theo," as Vincent van Gogh called his benefactor-brother.This poem of mine was her favorite. Thanks, Theo!LadybugLadybug, the autumnal, menopausal forest is aflame,
Burning with your yearning and desire: go home.
No season of mists or mellow fruitfulness for you, only
The hot flash of Eros dying, growing old.Fall now, the deep loam envelopes your breasts,
Dugs that hang low. The crimson leaves as
Veined as your hands, varices red and blue,
Glitter with last dew, the brilliance before death.Can you, withered Phoenix, rise?
Female over fifty, do you have your music, too?

TWO AWP PROPOSALS ACCEPTED FOR PORTLAND 2019!!!!

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Spectacular news! Two AWP proposals I am participating in have been accepted for the 2019 Portland Conference! So thrilled to be moderating "Hybrid Sex Writing: What's Your Position?" with panelists Cecilia Tan, Thaddeus RutkowskiJonathan Penton, and extra-amazing special guest Erica Jong!!!!! I am also event organizer and panelist for "The Critical Creative: The Editor-Poet" with our brilliant moderator Marc Vincenz and wonderful panelists Amy King, Kwame Dawes, and Michael Anania! What incredible colleagues and what great panels! Looking forward to a brilliant literary spring in 2019!

Baudelaire, “Beauty,” from Fleurs du Mal

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BeautyI am beautiful, o mortals, like a dream of stone,
And my breast, where each one has in his turn shattered,
Is made to inspire in poets a love
As mute and eternal and silent as matter.I reign in the azure like a sphinx out of mind;
I unite a heart of stone to the whiteness of swans;
I hate the movement that displaces the lines,
And never do I laugh and never do I cry.Poets, before my grand attitudes,
Which I seem to assume from the proudest statues,
Consume their days in austere études,
For I have, to fascinate these docile amants,
Pure mirrors which beautify everything they see:
My eyes, my great eyes, of eternal clarity.
Tr. L. Shmailo
La BeautéJe suis belle, ô mortels! comme un rêve de pierre,
Et mon sein, où chacun s'est meurtri tour à tour,
Est fait pour inspirer au poète un amour
Eternel et muet ainsi que la matière.Je trône dans l'azur comme un sphinx incompris;
J'unis un coeur de neige à la blancheur des cygnes;
Je hais le mouvement qui déplace les lignes,
Et jamais je ne pleure et jamais je ne ris.Les poètes, devant mes grandes attitudes,
Que j'ai l'air d'emprunter aux plus fiers monuments,
Consumeront leurs jours en d'austères études;
Car j'ai, pour fasciner ces dociles amants,
De purs miroirs qui font toutes choses plus belles:
Mes yeux, mes larges yeux aux clartés éternelles!

Happy birthday, Vladimir Mayakovsky!

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On the day of his death, Vladimir Mayakovsky visited his tailor, wrote this poem, played Russian roulette, and lost. Happy birthday, Vladimir Vladimirovich - we celebrate your life.It's after one. You've likely gone to sleep.
The Milkway streams silver, an Oka through the night.
I don't hurry, I don't need to wake you
Or bother you with lightning telegrams.
Like they say, the incident is cloved.
Love's little boat has crashed on daily life.
We're even, you and I. No need to account
For mutual sorrows, mutual pains and wrongs.
Look: How quiet the world is.
Night cloaks the sky with the tribute of the stars.
At times like these, you can rise, stand, and speak
To history, eternity, and all creation.Translated L. Shmailo

TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY RUSSIAN POETRY AT THE POETRY SCHOOL

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Delighted that the Poetry School is using Twenty-first Century Russian Poetry,  the

 anthology of ultra-contemporary Russian verse I edited, as the basis of their course, 

Transreading Russia.

https://poetryschool.com/courses/transreading-russia/

Description:
‘We are Russian and we have extra genes for compassion and asking unanswerable questions,’ writes Larissa Shmailo, editor of Twenty-First Century Russian Poetry. This online anthology of 50 poets in English translation becomes our essential reading in the course that invites us to look at present-day Russia through its poetry, beyond the looming news of Putinism. We will write our own poems in response to the ‘accursed questions’ posed by contemporary Russian poets about ‘the meaning of life, love, suffering, God and the devil.’ As the anthology boasts a wide range of approaches, from experimental to lyric to language poetry, we can expand our own repertoire of engaging with similar questions: by offering tentative answers or formulating new questions. To celebrate creative writing as translation and translation as creative writing, we will be joined by our special guest, Sasha Dugdale, poet and translator from Russian, who will talk to us about her work, also as the editor of the Russian and Ukrainian focus of Modern Poetry in Translation. In cooperation with the journal, we will create new poems inspired by this themed issue – the texts will be published on the MPT website as a featured project.

Contemporary Russian Poetry in Search of a Global Poetics: The Poetry of Alexander Skidan

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The program for the Association of Slavic, Eastern European and Eurasian Studies Conference is now available. My panel, Contemporary Russian Poetry in Search of a Global Poetics, will take place December 9, 8:00 - 9:45 am. Chair: Vladimir V. Feshchenko; Panel: Eugene OstashevskyEvgeny Pavlov, myself; Discussant: OIga Sokolova. I will be speaking on global prosodies informing syntax and semantics in the experimental poetry of Alexander Skidan.Contemporary Russian Poetry in Search of a Global Poetics
Sun, December 9, 8:00 to 9:45 am, Boston Marriott Copley Place, 1, Columbus II
Session Submission Type: PanelBrief Description
The focus of the panel is on contemporary Russian poetry's conscious quest for a global poetics. Specific case studies of several key poets, both living and recently deceased, conducted in the panel contributions will raise a number of important questions, ranging from linguistic to philosophical to political ones. What does it mean to be a global Russian poet today? How do globalised poetic strategies of Russian poets compare to the Western ones? What are the antecedents of the today's poets' globalising attitudes? What are the theoretical challenges of conceptualising a global poetics in the Russian context?

My review of Marc Vincenz's LEANING INTO THE INFINITE

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I am not a fan of the unadorned vernacular in poetry, no matter how sincere its sentiment or pertinent its message. In my book, what a poet should do is invent wonderful turns of phrases, new syntax, head-turning semantics. There should be a dialectic of differences which interacts to ­­create the magical, entirely new, entirely necessary synthesis. A poet should bring brilliant LANGUAGE to the reader, by which I more nearly mean semiotics, meaningful, culturally rich, innovative signs that the reader gets to deconstruct time and time again. If you are tired of reading monosyllabic laundry list poetry, then you will be delighted by Marc Vincenz, a poet who trucks in the unpredictable and unexpected, and who conjoins words like gems for jewelry.In Leaning into the Infinite, Vincenz displays a magical imagination that mines from three continents and a dozen cultures. The language is literate and sparkling. Look at a typical title: “When Uncle Fernando Conjures Up a Dead-Bird Theory of Everything,” where Fernando is “Portuguese poet, Fernando Pessoa and his many alter egos . . .  written under more than seventy heteronyms.”  Other inspirations are Li Po, Wang Wei, Kafka, Paracelsus, Heraclitus, and Robert Bly. If Auden multitasked, if cummings studied alchemy, if Borges reincarnated into a Hong Kong-born British-Swiss living in America on a green card, you might get a Marc Vincenz.Vincenz’s Infinite is a poetry of mind, a garden of images and ideas and characters that is uncannily aware of its reader. Perhaps all good poetry has this in common, this drawing of the reader in, like an accomplice to its art. Vincenz’s poetry engages and questions, implicitly and explicitly: “How?” “Should I?” “Who?” In “Unreliable Narrator,” he asks “Should I be / stumped / by the greatness / of God . . .”Who then isthe protagonistwhen trillionsof single cellsall thinkfor themselves?—or together?—The poet asks and the spare Basho–like verses —and rich longlined poems later in the collection—wait for answer. The poet’s elegant use of line breaks and sculpted white space seem to invite readers to reply, to mark Leaning into the Infinite up with all kinds of marginalia.We have a tradition in the European canon of the philosopher-poet, in which a poet offers insights into the human condition. Modern poets do so ponderously as a whole. Vincenz’s touch on this is so light and his language so original that you scarcely know you are being enlightened. His temporal range is from the nascent prehistory of cave paintings to the post-relativistic twenty-first century. His worlds are populated with extraordinary beings, including the aforementioned Uncle Fernando and his interlocutor, the oracular Sibyl. In “Uncle Fernando & Sibyl Exchange Curt Words,” Fernando asks for “that mythical moment” and the oracle replies, “Hush,”:Carbon first.Then light.Sibyl, Vincenz’s untamed muse, also appears in dialogues between Prometheus and Orpheus:Orpheus:                                             Prometheus:The voice                                             & whatof time                                                 is that perfume— …                                                       . . .within the planes                                 the word madeof being                                               Thing…                                                        . . .Sibyl:whenever I startto try & explain itI forget wordsaltogetherMy favorite characters in Leaning into the Infinite include a finch singing to his mate from a tree-top which he thinks is a mountain, the Tree God Saluwaghnapani, and Milen, a Filipino wet-nurse who sings a song she “claimed drove off demons that grew within Javan / smog clouds: Ai-Li-Ma-Lu-Ma-Nu — . . . “Leaning into the Infinite ranges from Olympus to “The Penal Colony” and is vivid and visceral:Not from the gagged mouth—it knots & tangles in the larynx& the chain simply groans: ‘Have done it.Have it etched to the bone.’ It’s all in the pointed nib of the writers’ dark truth. In an enlightened moment the Bewildered gasps alone—The Orwellian/Kafkaesque boot stamps:Just                 Be                     a              good Citizen
Be                    JustAnd then the poet escapes to his natal Asia:O to be born reforested in Borneo where water doesn’t run off in disappointing sloughs, but cascades & careens within the bejeweled heartof a single fruiting tree, where a child is a rambutan(or the fleshy dumpling-pulp of a mangosteen)— . . .Vincenz speaks to the childlike longing in us to have a storyteller/mentor introduce us to the world’s mysteries, to share its secrets:If only I had a good uncle to sit me down at an uneven hearthwith a hot cup of mulled wine, a twinkle in his eye& this background whiff of ancient pine:To hear how the world begins green, fresh, tabula rasa:& late at night or early morning through air still as glass,to eavesdrop upon the grasses & their endless philosophizing.You have this uncle in Marc Vincenz. Drink up.

THE ART OF WAR

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The ancient military tactician Sun Tsu said in his Art of War: "When you are strong, appear weak; weak, appear strong." We have been laughing at the Trump administration, and they sprung a second Supreme Court nomination on us. No one in the leakiest of White Houses leaked a word about their campaign to install another extreme-right justice. Let's face it - net neutrality gone, world alliances shifted, two major propaganda arms installed - we've been outplayed, my friends. This is not Saturday Night Live - let's not underestimate our opponent.

"God doesn't want you to retire."

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White evangelicals are the driving force behind Trump. But living in a liberal bubble, it is difficult to appreciate the insanity of their thinking, for want of a better word, and the degree to which Republican politicians manipulate them with the Bible. 
For example: Representative Greg Gianforte of Montana (the one who beat up the Guardian reporter) was talking about social security to a constituent. He asked, "How old was Noah when he died?" The constituent dutifully answered, "600." "So, God doesn't want you to retire!" retorted the Republican.
Or, Jay Sekolow (Trump's lawyer) writing about the end of days and claiming Trump to be the only hope against the Apocalypse.
Or, states like Texas asking writers of textbooks (me among them) not to mention the age of the Earth or evolution, as creationism replaces science.
The evangelical movement forgives Trump everything because they believe he is fulfilling prophecy and will bring about a theocratic state, with them in charge. Only one of the reasons I am a #neverTrump.

Trump Administration Is Thinking Long Term

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The Trump administration is not as stupid as it looks. With net neutrality gone, corporations which support the government will have greater control over the Internet content you can access. In addition to Fox News, Sinclair Media, which forces local news broadcasters to air 20-minute pure propaganda segments (eg, "Obama was funded by Hamas" - I kid you not!) will soon cover 72 percent of the television market. Trump has effectively isolated us by leaving the Paris Accord, the Iran Deal, and the UN Human Rights commission, and has alienated us from our democratic allies to partner with the dictatorial thugs of the world. Additionally, apparently, previous Republican administrations have devised plans for mass detentions - of US citizens. Trump is looking at these.Trump's approval rating stands at 45%. These polls precede the migrant child incarcerations, but most Trump supporters approve of them. But with a 5 percent increase in voter registration, Bernie Sanders says Democrats can take back the Senate and the House. I hope you will vote and register some friends; it may be the last opportunity you have to do so. In any event, as George Orwell said, sanity is not statistical - I will fight Trump whatever his polls say.

Adoption

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I was not a mother until today.The brand Trump is emblazoned on tents
and abandoned Walmarts. 
Nannies wear jackboots, joke as
children cry.
Secretly, at night, children are taken
to undisclosed locations across the nation.
Where are the girls? With
the Roy Moores of the world?Hear my NO.
Listen, Space Force:
I am the Horta, fighting for my children;
I will drive you from the planet.
Attention, big game hunters:
I am a tigress, risen from extinction,
to protest, protect the little cubs.
Hey, perps:
I, ordinary woman, with my instincts intact,
the maternal rising in me like a huge blue tide,
watch me topple the Orange Ozymandius.
What you have unleashed can’t be
lied to or stopped.
I am more than me, too;
I am the children, too.
6/21/18

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