think of honey

I really love this poem, but also, I don't know, it definitely feels like a good one for today (this week, this month, this year, this decade).

Should the years continue to press
As they press now, and in their pressing,
Press the sugar from my skin, let
The stone that forms inside me
Be amber.

Should there be aching, then,
For sweetness, should they
Come looking and find me, let them
Find in me this rock, and not
My bitter carapace. This rock,
And think of honey, stored away
For safe-keeping.

Tomorrow, who knows?

Should the sun burn out,
As it plans to do, and as it burns,
Burn down all the trees, let
My shadow be a cool thing,
Reaching out to shade you.

—Mendi Lewis Obadike, "Protest Poem," from Rainbow Darkness: An Anthology Of African American Poetry, edited by Keith Tuma (Miami University Press, 2005), and in my case from my heroes poetryisnotaluxury.

come out of your houses drumming

We gotta get some protest poems up in here. Here's Rita Dove, who I adore and haven't posted in a few years.

Listen, no one signed up for this lullaby.
No bleeped sheep or rosebuds or twitching stars
will diminish the fear or save you from waking

into the same day you dreamed of leaving—
mockingbird on back order, morning bells
stuck on snooze—so you might as well

get up and at it, pestilence be damned.
Peril and risk having become relative,
I’ll try to couch this in positive terms:

Never! is the word of last resorts,
Always! the fanatic’s rallying cry.
To those inclined toward kindness, I say

Come out of your houses drumming. All others,
beware: I have discarded my smile but not my teeth.

—Rita Dove, "Incantation of the First Order," originally published in Poem-a-Day by the Academy of American Poets on October 18, 2021.