Author: poetryfest

When the light flies apart, you see monsters in ordinary faces. The monsters are not the lie. The faces are.

For reasons known only to the bourgeoisie
For reasons situating tech conglomerates front row
For reasons couched in legalese
For reasons that make minstrelsy meaningful
For reasons that mock martyrs

About the nature of man/woman/and flesh
About the meaning of sin and purity
About the goings on of equality and progress
About the promise of sovereignty
About the master’s tools

In an attempt to usurp democracy
In an attempt to avoid prosecution
In an attempt to turn poverty against impoverished
In an attempt to uphold whiteness
In an attempt to preserve Christianity

That he didn’t rape E. Jane Carroll
That he didn’t mishandle national security documents
That he didn’t commit treason
That he didn’t participate in RICO
That he won’t do it all again

Hoping that the veil would remain over our eyes
Hoping we would eat each other before feasting on them
Hoping we’d die from their pollution
Hoping we’d hate one another enough to ignore them
Hoping “tomorrow” would be enough hope for us

And it was brilliant
And it assured a second rise to power
And it turned the American dream into diarrhea
And it assaulted blackness for being black
And it made memories of yesteryear into memories of yesterday

The rally at Madison Square Garden was loud. The words were louder. The banners hung thick like smoke, and the cheers rose sharp and cruel. It wasn’t the insults that mattered—though they mattered plenty—it was the faces of the crowd. Some smiling, some screaming, and others just nodding. It wasn’t the first time a man like Donald Trump took the stage and said what he said. But this time, they made him president again.

“We have to take our country back,” he said. From who? From what? The faces in the crowd nodded along because they knew the answer, even if they wouldn’t speak it. It was from other Americans. The ones with darker skin, the ones who prayed differently, loved differently, spoke languages that didn’t roll easy off the tongue. It was from women, too—women who dared to think, lead, demand, or refuse.

Trump stood tall, a 34-count felon in the office of president, saying he’d make America great again. Great like when? No one asked. Maybe they didn’t want the answer.

This country has always had a story about itself. A story where it stood for freedom and fairness. But the truth is something else, and everyone knows it when they’re honest. They don’t like being called racist, no, but they’ll nod along when a man says “poisoning the blood of America.” They’ll hear it and not flinch. They’ll clap and shout and tell themselves it means something else. And when he calls a woman “nasty,” when he mocks her ambition, when he reduces her to her looks or her silence, they’ll nod along to that, too.

The browning of America is happening. That’s true. And for some, it is a terror. For others, it’s the rising voices of women they fear most. Misogyny runs through this country’s veins as deep as racism does, and they often walk hand in hand. A woman in power? A woman with confidence? It’s not just distaste; it’s rage.

They elected the man who bragged about grabbing women by the parts of themselves they didn’t offer him. They heard him say it, and they laughed. Or they excused it. Or they shrugged because they’d said worse themselves. And when they’re called what they are—racist, misogynist—they get angry, because the truth burns worse than any insult.

When did it become so ugly to be called a racist or a misogynist in America? It wasn’t always that way. It was a badge of pride for many for a long time. Maybe they stopped saying it because the world told them to. Maybe they thought if they stopped saying the word, the stain would fade. It didn’t.

After World War II, you couldn’t find a Nazi in Germany if you tried. Not one. Everyone was suddenly clean. But the camps didn’t build themselves, and the mobs didn’t cheer alone. It’s the same here. You can’t find a racist in America if you ask around. You can’t find a misogynist, either. But the votes are counted, the rallies are full, and the truth is in the loud silences between cheers.

A nation doesn’t elect men like this unless it sees itself in them. That’s the hardest part of it all. To understand that it isn’t just him—it’s them. It’s us. The racism isn’t just in the slogans or the speeches. The misogyny isn’t just in the jeers or the jokes. It’s in the silence that follows. It’s in the hands pulling the lever in the voting booth. It’s in the stories we tell ourselves to feel better when we look in the mirror.

America chose. They chose knowing what he said, knowing what it meant. They chose because it was who they are. That’s the truth, and it is heavy

What if I bury the bones
Of migrant mothers
To grant them permission
to stay and rattle the earth
Echoing their existence
Like our ancestors?

What if I make a bloody show
For birthing mothers
To remind them that our labor
Gives us the right to raise our litter
And lick our wounds
Like strong, wild wolves.
We have everything we need
Within us.

What if I pour poetry
Like a warm stream of piss
Melting the snow
Marking my place
Like the proud bitch that I am?

What if , instead of spit, I vomit
Green grassy bile in the bowel
Of your polished black shoe?

A dog always returns to its vomit.
America circles, retelling the tale.
“It’s not a reinvention, it’s a remix.”

Told in three acts

Act I
What is a pen
But a makeshift magic wand?
The books were burning and
She hoped the empire would fall

Act II
There are seven different mosses
And lichens on this stump
And have they lost their composure
In spite of asylum and foreclosure?
Do they also look at the stars
And think about work?
About how the whore combs her hair
While the neighborhood burns?
How tax season comes around
Every year? It’s not so sexy but we’re
All sluts to the system here
Withdrawing cash to get the gear

Act III
I’ll stop to write because
It’s all I have to do
You swallow the pill
Or the pill swallows you

Performed by Val Cole

Sunbeam, by Amita Jayant Sanghavi

Sometimes a memory
Burns and scalds
So bad
Those moonbeams
Can’t soothe
The seething heart,
Sometimes a memory
Leaves shivers and chills
So bad
Those sunbeams
Can’t warm
The frozen heart.

Between
The moonbeams
And the sunbeams,
The ‘present’
Tosses in unwished
Gifts of its own;

The wild winds
Have blatantly blown,
With worries of the
Future unknown.

As I have grown
Accustomed to Life’s game
I firmly hold my hand
And tall I stand,
Just on my own.

Performed by Val Cole

READING:

Existential Hazards of the Mythmaker, by Michelle Chen
In English class we learn how the lotus flower, native
to Guyana, is a fiction of resilience, but under keen
Chinese eyes blooms purity in the dark. Because critical
interpretation never lies – unlike climate deniers, harms none
with narcissistic subjectivity, personal insight,
the queer naked streams and rivulets it produces
from ash-dusted inkwells, bound and gilded paper sonnets
all reversible with the tenderizing root of a whip, breaking-in
of a sand-flecked mustang lost and grazing celestial beneath
the shifting leaves of cottonwood understories – good argument.

But no words may possess where I’ve lived for nineteen years
no debater may capture any time zone, nor grammatical instructor
invade conservation with unwieldy tradition, not epic novel lectures
timed before Aristotelian systems collapsed – earth, wind,
fire, water, Ptolemaic heavens spinning vulnerable circles,
quintessence of stars, planets, antidote of all disease. In other
words, seek geopolitical tensions of a single tulip planted
in an English garden, unnatural clusters in Europe’s
Chinese courts perfuming medieval midnights. They say
rising tides and heat waves live and die without intervention,
how the four elements of emotion wash over us
in Mandarin before vanishing.

In twenty-four seasons watching cherry blossoms fall on Park Avenue
with the muddied runoff of gasoline-soaked snow, believing winter
and spring never fought, or were torn apart, loved or even recognized
one another – only consumption’s sorrows, creeping steam
treatments for asthma, boiling water into clear diamond glasses,
cirrus bubbles foaming away lead in dreams, ghostly
chromium 6 combusting liver, lungs, womb, high fevers.
Public housing’s chlorine mutations, the magic of pretending
and oblivion. For the female titan Theia bestowed elements
their brilliant looks, forgetting beauty attracts misfortune. Only
known for the children she bore, she of starry cow-eyes.
Her roving gaze searches for governmental carelessness,
crafting mid-victorian diseases of melting, torrential rains,
skin slickened in debauched contact – how the drought
is our thirst, flooded air all our gasps.

Actually, they were in exile for ages
Adulation ensnared deep down cages
Senile ataxy exploited their minds
Except it wasn’t that serious, just silly reminds

Her naive seed had sprouted short of me
Poker-face of a conned frail
But I was the one who kindled her bleed
Need not abase yourself it’s sword and sorcery in and of itself
I know I tore you down before your stem was free
The bristletail you became fresh out the slammer
You’ve blossomed and you’re right in front of me
The penitentiary I held you in when you were just an ingenue
Fuck, it all just came back to me.

Actually, she is incessantly beautiful
So, fuck if I’ll ever be sure why she even loved me
Since back then I ignorantly beyond innocently fucked her in the head
God, I swear that wasn’t really me, these thoughts are just some ephemera of what nethermost
despair made up the sinking empire around me
But seriously, had my mind been clear, had I not been a trained pistoleer
I would have never fucking hurt her
Pistol to my head, for real.

We both know it was me who should’ve been locked up and away
It will always be my fault for condemning you astray.
So, I am sorry, my dear
and I owe you unending peace.

You blew spit on me
when you laughed,
your hands cupping your mouth
a split second too slow to cover your raspberry giggle.

And even though you apologized profusely,
turning beet red as you
turned to escape
from me,
to hide.
All I want
is to pull you back,

To see if I can make
you smile again,
where your body
lets its every guard drop
in one spit second,
and your heart moves too
fast for your brain.

So tonight when I go home,
hair reeking of spirits, sauces, and spice,
skin still sticky from nerves,
I don’t think I’ll shower; ‘cuz if I did,
I’d wash away the tiny
flecks of proof
of when I saw you
for the first time.