Member Poem

Beyond All Earthly Words

My activist lesbian novelist sister
Posted on Facebook
just post Election Day.

"Woke up
with a song in my head
and realized it's the Kaddish."

It did feel like a death.
An assassination of our ideals
The burial of our complacence.

Our Timelines were filled
with vitriol and fear
in unequal measure.

We gorged on talk
Of tiny hands
on huge sh!tholes.

Variations on Orange
bloated Twitter memes
Filled Facebook.

Scary pumpkin head man,
Complexion like a Cheeto.
The marshmallow Circus peanut.

We snickered at silly food similes,
Though nothing was funny,
And our appetites were gone.

We read the American obituary, and saw
the new stone that would mark its place
With an Inaugural unveiling.

We cringed at the ugliness revealed
The stifling of our spirits,
The denial of our dreams.

We march, and our numbers rise.
We watch, we phone,
we fight for our rights.

We write for those wronged
Being ‘other’ should not mean lacking
Different does not mean of less worth.

Still, we have not given up the fight.
The list of their transgressions grows
It will until they're stopped.

I am heartsick, but I have to believe:
We each have a voice we can use
In aid of our conscience and convictions

When words and deeds and power combine
Their leverage will bring strength to those confined
To break through walls, manufactured or metaphorical.

The Kaddish seems apt, as we mourn our greatest loss.
What we can't help but fear will happen again.
The truth of our people all but erased.

As if we were not “chosen” en masse
its singular horror unacknowledged,
though its evidence is indelible.

<i>A/N: Title from the translation of the Mourner's Kaddish</I>