Nell Powers-Beck

You Can’t Spell Stonewall Without the Letter T

Human. Human. Human.
Humans in the halls, at the desks, crowding cafeteria tables,
humans in classrooms, and parking lots, and staircases, and libraries.

That is what schools are, what a campus is, where humans belong.

Book burning in the digital age does not look much
different, to those who can read the
headlines say 2 hundred & 50 thousand people march in Munich
to protest the rise of fascism in America.

Last February in Oklahoma the Governor drew his
signature- a straight line to the death of a child,
beaten into blackout on the bathroom floor
of their high school. The one he told them to use.

Imagine, children illegal in schools?
Imagine, children illegal.

Senator Cirino amendes Universities to Institutions.
Liberal arts, from the Latin libre, “free.”
Replaced with factories of information.

There are stories older than any walls.
Our bodies, baskets, woven to hold them.
Perfect echoes of a shape, rippling
through the people, who gather in the streets,
to chant a tidal wave, an elegy of names.
First written in the wilted flesh, the
round bellies of grandmothers.
Stories of freedom and the promise of our birth.

An entire world away
the Nightingale threatens extinction,
yet, still- walk in to the forest and sing,
they will join you.
You do not have to teach them,
for they have always known.
They, too, were built around a story.

And if they die, they will die that way,

Singing.

Amber Glass

The glass is still falling
to the kitchen floor.
I was too late before it began,
the steady, rhythmic grating
of the cup scooting across the countertop.
In small, determined heaves,
punctuated by meows, one last thrust,
a ringing silence.
And it’s been falling ever since.

I will not be surprised
when it breaks.
I will not feel relief.
I may hardly notice it.

I dreamt you died
again last night.
Whenever you do,
I get to see you again,
one last, tragic opportunity
to do something different,
to change the past.

I didn’t wake up crying.
It didn’t alter the direction of my day.
The white noise of your death
is always playing its electric static.
Sometimes, I hardly notice.