Thoughts from a Thinking Girl

I’ve been waiting for anger to subside
or at least squidgy a little to the left
or, if not that, slide a bit lower
or melt, maybe, from my furrowed brow and clenched jaw
or warm the nippy fluids buffering my heart by just half a degree
or soften just the tiniest bit the hardened knot in my belly
or shush just a millisecond from the mind chatter with that certain tone –
the one used by teens tragically misunderstood by supportive liberal suburban parents –
to make way for the poem to emerge.

 
Yes, waiting.

 
But it’s not going according to plan.

 
This poem wants to be angry.
Wants to say it lives in freakish times
that if the Man in charge is neither a man
nor sanely in charge of anything,
that this poem, every poem, should be as angry as it f*in wants.

 
This poem wants to say that it gets to be angry
even if its conduit’s outer shell is pink and female
and a bit weathered by decades.

 
This poem wants to say that what you do –
holding power in a fist you shake above your head
raw meat waiting for the grinder
spewing words so callous and dismissive –
is outrageous and unjust.
It wants to stamp its stressed iambic foot.

 
This poem and all its friends wonder
if there is some trick being played,
some Truman Show moment that will reveal we have been,
thank you very much,
part of a new Zimbardo experiment,
freed now to return to the lives we were on track to lead,
a little bruised and zinged by the lesson –
when some are randomly put in the role of guard
and others unwittingly the prisoners.

 
This poem wants to rant and rave
and say it’s not enough to take to the streets
if the streets will continue to be yours.

 
This poem wants you to go home,
to leave it and all its well-meaning cousins
to sit and enjoy a cup of tea around their winter hearths.

 
This poem wants to nestle among friends
hushed and lulled by rhythms
words it might not understand

poesia and poesie
שִׁירָה and alshaer
si and gabay

to be tucked into bed under a quilt of thoughtful words,
awaken tomorrow to try again.

 
I have to make way for this poem
because it is here.

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Note: The terms for poetry are, in order, Salvadoran Spanish, German, Hebrew, Arabic, Korean and Somali