Poetry Blog: "A Work Day in Hard Times"

“Yet God (that hews mountain and continent,
Earth, all, out:
who, with trickling increment,
Veins violets and tall trees makes more and more)”

Alfonso Rodriquez, sj was a not-very-professionally-educated door-keeper who lived a barely-noticed life – – decades of simple employment welcoming visitors to the Jesuit college of Majorca in the 1500s – – was named a Saint according to Catholic practice in 1888. “Barely-noticed” or not, while he lived, he caught the poetic attention of Gerard Manley Hopkins, sj.  His “in honor of St. Alphonsus Rodriquez — Lay brother of the Society of Jesus” offers readers some of his most lyrical and delicate rhythms and imagery ever.

If you’ve never read the poem, prepare yourselves to be astonished and charmed all through the poem, G M H’s cadence and word-choices at every turn.   Surely the poem calls for reading out loud, several times, with pauses.

Have a blest weekend, this early mid-summer as we keep vigil with a virus and our courage.

john sj

“In honour of  St. Alphonsus Rodriquez, Lay brother of the Society of Jesus”

HONOUR is flashed off exploit, so we say;

And those strokes once that gashed flesh or galled shield

Should tongue that time now, trumpet now that field,

And, on the fighter, forge his glorious day.

On Christ they do and on the martyr may;

But be the war within, the brand we wield

Unseen, the heroic breast not outward-steeled,

Earth hears no hurtle then from fiercest fray.

Yet God (that hews mountain and continent,

Earth, all, out; who, with trickling increment,

Veins violets and tall trees makes more and more)

Could crowd career with conquest while there went

Those years and years by of world without event

That in Majorca Alfonso watched the door.

Hopkins, painted 24 July 1866

Gerard Manley Hopkins  28 July 1844 – 8 June, 1889
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_Manley_Hopkins

Wednesday, July 15, 2020
“I knew too well what had befallen me,
when one night . . . ”

Denise Levertov died in her late 60s.  I miss her, a fiery advocate for global justice and a poet of the sacred mysteries of intimacy. In her later years, she published a wonderful book of poems she titled Evening Train.  One of my favorite of her poems appears there about being startled by surprises of the heart in older age.

If you are older, I bet you will breathe in her kindness laced with humor.
If you are younger, she gives you good stuff to look forward to  – – –  the graces of being surprisable.

Best to read this poem out loud,   with pauses,   several times.

Have a blest day,

john sj

“Ancient Airs and Dances”

I

I knew too well
what had befallen me
when, one night, I put my lips to his wineglass
after he left–an impulse I thought was locked away with a smile
into memory’s museum.
When he took me to visit friends and the sea, he lay
asleep in the next room’s dark where the fire
rustled all night; and I, from a warm bed, sleepless,
watched through the open door
that glowing hearth, and heard,
drumming the roof, the rain’s
insistent heartbeat.
Greyhaired, I have not grown wiser,
unless to perceive absurdity
is wisdom. A powerless wisdom.

II

Shameless heart! Did you not vow to learn
stillness from the heron
quiet from the mists of fall,
and from the mountain–what was it?
Pride? Remoteness?
You have forgotten already!
And now you clamor again
like an obstinate child demanding attention,
interrupting study and contemplation.
You try my patience. Bound as we are
together for life, must you now,
so late in the day, go bounding sideways,
trying to drag me with you?

Denise Levertov – Evening Train

Denise Levertov
(b. 24 October 1923  d.  20 December 1997)

Friday, July 13  — Joy Harjo “She had some horses”

I came across this essay about teaching young students to read, and fall in love with Joy Harjo’s poem, “She Had Some Horses.”   That makes today’s an unusual post,  a great poet breathing life and hope into a great teacher’s inner-city classroom.   It’s also longer than most workday posts.   Worth it, I think;  I hope you find it so too.

Have a great week,

john sj

Julie Morse:   “The last poem I loved:  ‘She had some horses’ by Joy Harjo”

Reading my own poetry feels like looking into a blurred old mirror at an antique shop. I can’t tell if I look good or pale and pasty. I can’t figure out if it’s my writing or my self-criticism that is falling flat. But lately that’s been changing. I’ve been writing poems that aren’t cast in a massive shroud of self-judgment and I think it’s because I found Joy Harjo.

I discovered “She Had Some Horses” while preparing for the poetry class I teach at an elementary school in San Francisco. Harjo’s poems ache with grit, grief and nature. They feel like that moment of insomnia when twilight breaks. Her lines are curt and heavy but they construct delicate stories. I thought She Had Some Horses would be perfect for kids this young, whose imaginations are still lush and wild. To them, horses are still spirited creatures, not farm workers.

My students are eight through eleven years old. Some of them are at their grade reading-level, some are above and a few still can’t spell. My students don’t have the compulsion to analyze or to second-guess themselves. They’re quick to voice their instincts. But at the same time, they’re terrified of being wrong. Some days I feel like I’m a teacher, and others I feel like I’m just a referee hopelessly demanding that kids stop teasing, stop yelling, stop throwing pens.

At many schools, teachers have to adhere to a curriculum predesigned by a corporate education company. I am lucky that I get to make my own lesson plans. We’ve read Carl Sandburg, Rita Dove, Pablo Neruda and Luisa Valenzuela untranslated. Every kid in my class speaks Spanish at home and English in school; their brains are racing to simultaneously master two languages. Their poems are often a composite of Spanglish.

I can’t teach poems that have words with too many syllables, or poems about sex or violence or drugs. Although most of these kids already know about that stuff, and the meanings of the words they’re not supposed to hear or say. I must pretend that they don’t and that their minds are wholesome and pure.

She had horses with eyes of trains.
She had horses with full, brown thighs.
She had horses who laughed too much.
She had horses who threw rocks at glass houses.
She had horses who licked razor blades.

We only read the first half of part one of the poem, and I ask if anybody has any thoughts about it.

“The horses are magical,” says Silvia, a fourth-grader.
“The horses are supposed to be something else,” says Emanuel, a fifth-grader.
“Yes, perfect!” I say, this is probably the most in-depth analysis the class has made about any poem we’ve read.

I tell the class the horses mean more to Native Americans than they do to us. I explain that they are supposed to be a feeling, that they’ re something important to her, they’re her community. The repetition of “she had horses” is to express their significance.

She had horses who danced in their mothers’ arms.
She had horses who thought they were the sun and their
bodies shone and burned like stars.
She had horses who waltzed nightly on the moon.
She had horses who were much too shy, and kept quiet
in stalls of their own making.

“I don’t get it,” mumble a few students. I falter. I realize I was being too conceptual. Then I tell them these horses are horses but they’re also everything and everybody that she loves or make her feel sad or happy.

I could say more but I’m always afraid of saying too much. The poem is a gorgeous chant that swims laps in my mind. It’s about horses and it’s not. It’s something that I read over and over again just to bury myself deeper into its staggering meaning.

She had some horses she loved.
She had some horses she hated.
These were the same horses.

It’s time to write. I put on Stevie Wonder and a few kids rock in their seats to the music. I instruct them to write about something or someone that is important to them, and define them using Harjo’s style of repetition. But instead of “she had horses…”, to say, “my sister…” or “my dog…”. Some of the students almost get it, but really just end up writing physical descriptions, “my turtle is small, my turtle has a hard shell…”

But, Kimberly, a fourth grader has got it:

My sister when she uses a red marker she thinks about blood.
My sister is plenty of books.
My sister people thinks she is my aunt.
My sister she loves to study
My sister her eyes sparkle like a star.
My sister she sings like a jazz singer.

Kimberly’s is an ode to her sister just like Harjo’s is an ode. The repetition in both is a comforting reinforcement.

In the introduction to her book, She Had Some Horses, Harjo says, “it’s not about what the poem means, it’s ‘how’ the poem means.” And maybe that’s what helped turn poetry around for me. A poem is just the flight of colors and the collision of stories. No scrutiny needed.

Everybody raises their hand to read first. I declare every poem “awesome”, “beautiful”, “amazing”. I dole out compliments like the guy who hands out flyers that say “COMPRAMOS ORO” down the street. Sometimes I am surprised by my own generosity, but to me it is perfect, beautiful and amazing when anybody can be this vulnerable and proud.

Julie Morse lives in San Francisco and is a poetry teacher. More from this author →

p.p.s.  Here’s the whole poem.

She Had Some Horses

She had some horses.

She had horses who were bodies of sand.

She had horses who were maps drawn of blood.

She had horses who were skins of ocean water.

She had horses who were the blue air of sky.

She had horses who were fur and teeth.

She had horses who were clay and would break.

She had horses who were splintered red cliff.

She had some horses.

She had horses with long, pointed breasts.

She had horses full, brown thighs.

She had horses who laughed too much.

She had horses threw rocks at glass houses.

She had horses who licked razor blades.

She had some horses.

She had horses who danced in their mothers’ arms.

She had horses who thought they were the sun and their

bodies shone and burned like stars.

She had horses who waltzed nightly on the moon.

She had horses who were much too shy, and kept quiet

in stalls of their own making.

She had some horses.

She had horses liked creek Stomp Dance songs.

She had horses who cried in their beer.

She had horses who spit at male queens who made

them afraid of themselves.

She had horses who said they weren’t afraid.

She had horses who lied.

She had horses who told the truth, who were stripped

bare of their tongues.

She had some horses.

She had horses who called themselves, “horse”.

She had horses who called themselves “spirit”; and kept

their voices secret and to themselves.

She had horses who had no names.

She had horses who had books of names.

She had some horses.

She had horses who whispered in the dark, who were afraid to speak.

She had horses who screamed out of fear of the silence, who

carried knives to protect themselves from ghosts.

She had horses who waited for destruction.

She had horses who waited for resurrection.

She had some horses.

She had horses who got down on their knees for any saviour.

She had horses who thought their high price had saved them.

She had horses who tried to save her, who climbed in her

bed at night and prayed as they raped her.

She had some horses.

She had horses she loved.

She had horses she hated.

These were the same horses.

Joy Harjo, from the book of the same title

cd performance version  of 12 poems from the book available on iTunes

George Danko to John sj about two great poets, one mentoring the other  in George’s New Jersey home town.

“It turns out that Williams, despite fragile health in his later years, mentored younger poets at his home.   One of them was Denise Levertov, a favorite of yours.”  – – –

I met George in early September 1973;  we were both finding our way around on the first day at U Penn’s PhD program in American Civilization.  45 years later we remain good friends and sometimes trade stories of discovery, or grief, or beauty.   Yesterday, George surprised me.  From reading the Work Day/Hard Times poetry list, he knew that the poets William Carlos Williams and Denise Levertov often find their way from my memory and imagination onto the pages of this list.  Until yesterday morning I had no notion that Carlos Williams and Levertov, though a long generation apart,  had a personal connection – – an old poet-pediatrician mentoring a young poet just finding a way into her compelling public imagination.   Until yesterday, I had no notion that these two poets, both of whom I have come to cherish, shared a living room where William Carlos Williams listened to Denise Levertov’s young voice and told her what he heard.

George.  I owe you for many of your stories, including this one.  Thanks a million.

john sj

Today’s Post:   George Danko to John sj May 22

Dear John,

I recently read a children’s book, A River of Words, about William Carlos Williams, the pediatrician and poet who wrote and ministered to families in my hometown of Rutherford, New Jersey. His son also followed his father in a medical career and was my pediatrician. It turns out that Williams, despite fragile health in his later years, mentored younger poets at his home. One of them was Denise Levertov, a favorite of yours.

George

William Carlos Williams:     “The Manoeuvre”

I saw the two starlings
coming in toward the wires
But at the last,
just before alighting, they

turned in the air together

and landed backwards!

that’s what got me —
to face into the wind’s teeth.

William Carlos Williams
September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Carlos_Williams

Denise Levertov:  “The Poem Rising By Its Own Weight”
The poet is at the disposal of his own night.
Jean Cocteau

The singing robes fly onto your body and cling there silkily,
You step out on the rope and move unfalteringly across it,

And seize the fiery knives unscathed and
Keep them spinning above you, a fountain
Of rhythmic rising, falling, rising
Flames,

And proudly let the chains
Be wound about you, ready
To shed them, link by steel link,
padlock by padlock–

but when your graceful
confident shrug and twist drives the metal
into your flesh and the python grip of it tightens
and you see rust on the chains and blood in your pores
and you roll
over and down a steepness into a dark hole
and there is not even the sound of mockery in the distant air
somewhere above you where the sky was,
no sound but your own breath panting:
then it is that the miracle
walks in, on his swift feet,
down the precipice straight into the cave,
opens the locks,
knots of chain fall open,
twists of chain unwind themselves,
links fall asunder,
in seconds there is a heap of scrap-
metal at your ankles, you step free and at once
he turns to go —
but as you catch at him with a cry,
clasping his knees, sobbing your gratitude,
with what radiant joy he turns to you,
and raises you to your feet,
and strokes your disheveled hair,
and holds you,
holds you,
holds you
close and tenderly before he vanishes.

Denise Levertov
b. October 1923  d. December 1997

Wednesday,  July 8, 2020

I began learning to teach as a 24-year-old kid at Holy Rosary Mission on Pine Ridge in South Dakota.  My life daunted me pretty much every day – so much I didn’t know about teaching, or about Lakota culture, or about the violence of Western culture as it assaulted Lakota culture over a century and a half. One of my jobs in that 7-day-week boarding school was to take care of c. 110 boys ages 5 to 14 in double and triple deck bunk beds. I took the K-4th graders up an hour before the older boys, got them ready for bed, tended scrapes they had acquired through the day, and told them a story once they were in bed. As they fell asleep, I walked among the bunk beds. I understood that some of these beautiful children already knew about violence and probably would not make it into a durable adulthood – and others would, no knowing which. It broke my heart to see them sleeping in a safe place within an unsafe world. During those nights these 2 lines from Isaiah’s “Song of the Servant of God” befriended me.

“A bruised reed he shall not break,
a smoldering wick he shall not quench.”

I began to imagine that The Servant of God about whom Isaiah spoke would not be frightened off by violence in the world. It’s one reason why I came to love Joy Harjo’s poem about the coming of spring after a hard winter in a racist prairie town.  I repeat it today because “Grace” reminds me of “The Servant Song.”  Perhaps also because very many people today must stretch so hard to let their imaginations be touched by tenderness and hope . . . in these wearing times.

Best to read both Isaiah’s song and Joy Harjo’s “Grace” out loud, with pauses.

Have a blest mid-week,

john sj

Isaiah and Joy Harjo  –  two prophets of hope
Today’s Post  –  “Grace”

I think of Wind and her wild ways the year we had nothing to lose and lost it anyway
in the cursed country of the fox. We still talk about that winter, how the cold froze
imaginary buffalo on the stuffed horizon of snowbanks.

The haunting voices of the starved and mutilated broke fences, crashed our thermostat
dreams, and we couldn’t stand it one more time.

So once again we lost a winter in stubborn memory, walked through cheap apartment
walls, skated through fields of ghosts into a town that never wanted us,
in the epic search for grace.

Like Coyote, like Rabbit, we could not contain our terror and clowned our way through a
season of false midnights.

We had to swallow that town with laughter, so it would go down easy as honey.

And one morning as the sun struggled to break ice, and our dreams had found us with
coffee and pancakes in a truck stop along Highway 80, we found grace.

I could say grace was a woman with time on her hands, or a white buffalo escaped from

memory. But in that dingy light it was a promise of balance.

We once again understood the talk of animals, and spring was lean and hungry with the
hope of children and corn.

I would like to say, with grace, we picked ourselves up and walked into the spring thaw.

We didn’t; the next season was worse.

You went home to Leech Lake to work with the tribe and I went south.

And, Wind, I am still crazy.

I know there is something larger than the memory of a dispossessed people. We have seen it.

Monday,  July 6   {first posted August 14, 2017}

“Unbeaten by the rain
Unbeaten by the wind
Bested by neither snow nor summer heat”

Some years ago, browsing “A Week of Being Here,” Kenji Miyazawa met me for the first time.  I’d never heard of him.  This poem was found in his trunk after he died in his early thirties. It stops me just as does standing on the shore of Belle Isle can stop me.  {Kenji Miyazawa (宮沢 賢治 Miyazawa Kenji?, 27 August 1896 – 21 September 1933) was a Japanese poet and author of children’s literature from Hanamaki, Iwate in the late Taishō and early Shōwa periods. He was also known as an agricultural science teacher, a vegetarian, cellist, devout Buddhist, and utopian social activist.[1]}

Even more than most poems, “Be Not Defeated” should reward reading aloud with pauses.   I think this Buddhist poet will meet readers of the list again.

Have a blest week.

john sj

Today’s Post  —  Kenji Miyazawa: “Be Not Defeated by the Rain”

Unbeaten by the rain
Unbeaten by the wind
Bested by neither snow nor summer heat
Strong of body
Free of desire
Never angry
Always smiling quietly
Dining daily on four cups of brown rice
Some miso and a few vegetables
Observing all things
With dispassion
But remembering well
Living in a small, thatched-roof house
In the meadow beneath a canopy of pines
Going east to nurse the sick child
Going west to bear sheaves of rice for the weary mother
Going south to tell the dying man there is no cause for fear
Going north to tell those who fight to put aside their trifles
Shedding tears in time of drought
Wandering at a loss during the cold summer
Called useless by all
Neither praised
Nor a bother
Such is the person
I wish to be

“Be Not Defeated by the Rain” by Kenji Miyazawa. Translated from the original Japanese by Hart Larrabee. Text as posted on Tomo 友(08/05/2012).

Curator’s note: After the poet’s death, a black notebook containing this text was found in his trunk. The poem appears in bold strokes amidst his repetitious copying of a Buddhist mantra. According to its date (November 3, 1931), he had composed it while on his deathbed. He was only in his thirties. Visit this link to view a photograph of the poem in the notebook, the original Japanese text, two very different translations (including Larrabee’s, which I prefer), and interviews with the interpreters.

Posted by Phyllis Cole-Dai on Aug 19, 2015 12:00 am

Art credit: “Girl in the rain,” Giclée print by Pavlo Tereshin.

Monday, November 14   Shiraz, “the oldest sample of wine in the world”

Poet Fatema Keshavarz reaches deep in time so she can lift up the beauty of Shiraz, her home city in Iran.   Shiraz has lived as a center for art and beauty for c. 4000 years.   Wikipedia tells me that “The oldest sample of wine in the world, dating to approximately 7,000 years ago, was discovered on clay jars recovered outside of Shiraz.”  Detroit is only 319 years old and the United States a lot younger than that, but in these days of terrified immigrants and their children,  of taunts boiling up from decades of grinding working class peoples’ losses, the poet’s praise of her ancient home town in Iran, another home  place of the resonant beauty and raw nerves offers stillness and courage to celebrate the simple beauty of a glass of good wine.

I am using Fatemeh’s poem to celebrate, the U.S.,  this nation of immigrants today.  Lift a glass when you get off work.   Perhaps before that, read the poem out loud, with pauses.

Have a blest day.

john sj

Today’s Post:    “Shiraz”

Held up to gods
In the palm of a giant’s hands
A rare handcrafted marble cup
Brimming with sunshine
Defined at the outer edges
With tall cypress trees
That line up at dawn reverently
To interpret the horizons
In their meticulous green thoughts

***

My city is
That cup of sunshine
I can drink to the last drop
And be thirsty for more.

Shiraz, Dec.21, 2000

Fatemeh Keshavarz
b. 1952 – Shiraz Iran

Professor Keshavarz, University of Maryland’s Roshan Chair of Persian Studies, is a poet and a scholar.
On September 11, 2014 she read poetry for the university’s annual Celebrate Spirit Mass.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatemeh_Keshavarz

Monday, June 29 –   “And no
his neighborhood is not like a war zone”

We, who live and work in Detroit, 8 Mile Road down to the River, live with many perceptions of Detroit.  Jamaal May’s “There are Birds Here” was new to me before a friend sent it, suggesting if for the “Work Day/Hard Time” poetry list.  Every poem does best when read out loud, with pauses – today’s, perhaps, especially so by the 3rd or 4th reading.  Detroit alive with vitality while carrying wounds as well.

Have a blest work week.

john sj

Today’s Post    “There Are Birds Here”
For Detroit

There are birds here,
so many birds here
is what I was trying to say
when they said those birds were metaphors
for what is trapped
between buildings
and buildings. No.
The birds are here
to root around for bread
the girl’s hands tear
and toss like confetti. No,
I don’t mean the bread is torn like cotton,
I said confetti, and no
not the confetti
a tank can make of a building.
I mean the confetti
a boy can’t stop smiling about
and no his smile isn’t much
like a skeleton at all. And no
his neighborhood is not like a war zone.
I am trying to say
his neighborhood
is as tattered and feathered
as anything else,
as shadow pierced by sun
and light parted
by shadow-dance as anything else,
but they won’t stop saying
how lovely the ruins,
how ruined the lovely
children must be in that birdless city.

1982-

Jamaal May, “There Are Birds Here” from The Big Book of Exit Strategies.
Copyright © 2016 by Jamaal May. Reprinted by permission of Alice James Books.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26196185-the-big-book-of-exit-strategies

Friday, June 26, 2020

“to cry for a vision is a sacred task”

The Lakota expression “hanblechia” means “he or she cries out for a vision.” It is the name of one of the most sacred Lakota rituals.  It begins with a sweat bath, singing begging prayers as the bodies of the people in the sweat lodge welcome supersaturated steam from igneous rocks,  which won’t explode when they have been fire heated to deep red; the people in the dark lodge have broken a sweat before the singer pours the first dipper of water onto the rocks.  The lodge has the shape of a half circle. The singer does not pour the first water until the door flap is closed and the people have all taken a position sitting cross legged and naked.  In that posture the roof of the lodge is only a few inches from the top of your head while you have bent forward to be close to the red hot stones which are a few inches from your face.

When the one seeking a vision finishes the sweat, s/he lets the holyman lead them to a place to pray alone, sometimes for 4 days of complete fasting, crying for a vision to help you, “usnsimala ya” “have pity on me.”  So I can receive a vision to live by.

It sometimes occurs to me that this ritual of begging for a vision can make a powerful prayer in these times when anger and danger and fear want to cloud our sense of our lives as sacred.   Jim Janda, a mystic poet and once a mystic Jesuit, wrote this poem out of his awareness of  “hanblechia”

Best to read the poem out loud, with pauses.

Have a blest weekend,

john sj

Today’s Post 

To cry for a
vision
is a sacred
task

after hearing
a holyman
after taking
a sweat bath
with sage and
sweet grass

one must climb a
mountain alone—

here a song
may be heard
here a vision
may be given
here a dance
may be learned—

one must then
leave
the mountain

to sing the
song
to live the
vision
to begin the
dance

J Janda

Jim Janda   d. August, 2010

p.s. Jim Janda lived as a mystic pilgrim for most of his 74 years. He died August 7, 2010 in Salt Lake City, a priest of that diocese since 1996. Jim also lived for a quarter century as a Jesuit which is when we met. Jim was “well known for his gentle and generous heart. . . . During his life he wrote and published a series of short religious stories for children, school plays and books of poetry.” So reads his obituary in the Salt Lake Tribune. The obit is accurate, as was the stated cause of his death, emphysema; I think he smoked too much. I can’t remember ever visiting with Jim without feeling bathed in wisdom and tenderness, and in his awareness of how deep grief runs in human beings, right there along with whimsy.

The Tribune’s evocation of “stories for children, school plays and books of poetry . . .” does not even hint at the flint-hard prose and fine-tuned ironies that throb and flow through his poems.

Jim Janda reminds me of Joy Harjo. I am glad I thought to pull his book off my poetry shelf.

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

“But how can they believe me?
When sometimes I don’t even believe myself.
Maybe it’s time to be loud.”

No strong poem is ordinary;  Maria’s surely is not ordinary either.  I am proud that the “Work Day in Hard Times” list has made a home for her voice among our poets and readers.    Best to read the poem out loud, with pauses.

Have a blest day,

john sj

Today’s Post –  “Being Catholic”

I wear my faith quietly,

like a pebble in your pocket

Smooth and cold,

Comforting when you hold it tight in your hand.

But to be more honest,

I wear my faith secretly, cautious of who

to tell the truth because

I’m not sure how my circle

of liberal, leftists, almost

socialists would take it.

How could I, a feminist who uses reason,

logic, and kindness, follow a church

that doesn’t let women be leaders?

Follow a God

who believes LGBTQ loved ones will rot in hell?

follow an institution

that rapes children?

Stop.

I want to tell them that

that isn’t my church, isn’t my God.

My God lives in jails and detention centers,

in water bottles left in the desert,

and school teachers who work too much for too little.

My God is in parents who love their gay

and trans kids as reflections

of God’s own image.

My faith is the holiness of women, the life

in service for others.

My God is liberation.

She is the power of the storm

and the stillness of it when it’s over.

She is Brown laborers

rebuilding a city,

and the sweat of their foreheads

feeding their families.

But how can they believe me? When

sometimes I don’t even believe myself.

Maybe it’s time to be loud.

As loud as the annoying (and wrong) fetus

fanatics who are pro-life without

really being pro-living.

Maybe it’s time to let my faith breathe. Take

my pebble and let throw it

in the water.

Let it make ripples.

No.

Let it make a fucking tsunami.

p.s.  Maria is the Southeast Michigan regional organizer for We the People Michigan. She immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico when she was nine years old and grew up Southwest Detroit and Dearborn. Maria has been fighting for immigrant justice for almost a decade, including grassroots organizing and political advocacy. She works closely with grassroots organizations to create alternative systems of immigrant-centered support and working to put people of color and women in positions of leadership. Maria graduated from the University of Detroit Mercy with a degree in English, and then went on to get a Masters of Social Work at the University of Michigan. On her free time Maria likes going for hikes, drinking expensive tea, and after reading Maria’s poem three or four times today, I came upon Karen Tumulty’s Washington Post column, “Why am I still a Catholic.”