Poem of the Week, by Ginny Lowe Connors
It is impossible to be a woman, it is impossible to be a woman: a mantra I chant to myself at some point almost every day. This mantra is usually comforting, in a weird way, because it reminds me I didn’t make this suffocating, cruel, abusive system we live in, nor am I alone in it.
Not today, though. Not with an illegitimate supreme court. Not with sanctimonious zealots who believe my religion doesn’t count but theirs does. Not with minority rule that wants to force us into cages. Maybe they think if they just keep saying no, we’ll be dulled into submission.
We won’t.
Betty Parris Hears Only No, by Ginny Lowe Connors
(daughter ef the R.everend Parris)
No running no dancing no wasting of time
no power no nonsense opinions or rage
all of our stitches must march a straight line
no running no dancing no wasting of time
stubbornness ugly defiance a crime
I dream I’ve been captured forced into a cage
no running no dancing no wasting of time
no power no nonsense opinions or rage
Please click here for Ginny Lowe Connors’ website.
alisonmcghee.com
Like many other patriotic citizens these days, free-range anxiety keeps waking me up in the middle of the night: health care, sexual assault, violence, our natural world, the crumbling of the democratic principles laid out in our constitution. Brutality in many and repulsive forms, from public mockery to online assaults. I’ve always been critical of what I see as the wrongs of some of my nation’s policies. But I never knew until now how much I love my country and how much I want it to keep righting its wrongs instead of retreating into some mythological past that served only one small segment of its citizens. The strange and powerful little poem below haunts me. No no no no no, is how most of its lines begin, and No no no no no is my response. I dream I’ve been captured forced into a cage, which is exactly why next weekend, my son and my daughters and I and many thousands of others will be descending on our nation’s capital to take a stand against fascism.
Alison McGhee 