Tag: police

Two Poems by Ariel Tovlev

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Praying in the Police Precinct

the warehouse a house of worship
our tallits tucked away in plastic
bags along with our belongings
but no prayer shawls needed for
our prayers

our bodies boundaried by a
makeshift mechitza down the middle
a segregating separation of perceived sex
(though I am no traditional Jew)
“women” on the left, “men” on the right
my t4t spouse and I straddling the line

we begin with ashrei
“how good it is to dwell in Your house!”
as if we weren’t zip-tied
as if we weren’t a kind of captive

we made it all the way
to “God is gracious and compassionate
slow to anger and abounding
in kindness” before being warned:
               it is illegal to sing in the precinct
               continue and get charged
               additional crimes

“it’s prayer!” we protested
               only silent prayer is allowed
never mind that even our
silent prayer is voiced
(God spoke the world
into being – we speak
our prayers into being)

a protestant privilege precluding us

our unfinished prayer of
gratitude lingered
in the air and in our ears
defiance welled up in
me like a birthday balloon

I sought my spouse’s
eye from across the aisle
on my lips another prayer
I wanted to share
the shehecheyanu
(prayer of firsts)
thank You God for giving
us life, sustaining us, bringing
us to this moment
even in this moment

it took three
tries to mouth
“shehecheyanu”
before they understood
under our breath audible to us
alone we prayed
in the police precinct

how good it is
to protest and pray!
how good it is
to feel our hands go numb
in our restraints
and hear our bellies grumble
with complaint
and know our misery
is only for a day!

how good it is
to be anything at all
alive, alive!
and how often I’ve forgotten
how stupid lucky we are
even in this moment

*

The Joy Planter

one does not cultivate joy
like a garden: store-bought soil
packed with manufactured nutrients
cedar planters’ scent
warding off insects and other pests
garden hose precisely placed (perhaps timered)
water flowing from an unknown source
chicken wire for the rabbits
who would nibble your joy away

one cultivates joy
like a scattering of seeds
precariously planted with a full fist
and your best non-athlete’s pitch
like a plant you continue to water
even after it’s already dead
like the succulent you ignored too well

and if you’re lucky
joy can grow like the forgotten acorn
a squirrel buried last spring
which it fully intended on eating
and is now sprouting into a tiny oak seedling

sometimes with sights set
on flower pots or garden beds
I miss the accidental plantings
from seeds squirreled away
and the surprise is half the joy

*

Ariel Tovlev (he/they) is a poet, educator, and rabbi. He has a BFA in Poetry from the University of British Columbia and an MFA from Chapman University. They have been published in Wayfarer Magazine, Pensive Journal, ONE ART, and various CCAR Press titles. They live in the Maryland suburbs of DC with their spouse, four cats, and a multitude of houseplants.

Two Poems by Natalie Homer

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Protest in a Small Town

Trucks trailing flags belch by,
stuttering their war cries,
their reds and blues, stars and bars.

When we chant Say her name
those on the other side of the street
drown our voices

and they make sure we can see
their guns, their sources of power,
because they’re afraid

our handmade signs, our impotent
shouts for justice will somehow
destroy our sad little town.

As they cross the street,
and the police let them,
I try not to think

of how easily any one of us
could not make it home.
But who are we to complain?

they ask, and maybe they’re right.
I have no answer, so I look instead
at the planters of bubblegum petunias

that the city maintains each summer,
with such care, the watering trucks
making stops in the cool of the morning

to keep the fragile flowers alive,
even though it’s just for a season.
When our permit expires, and we leave,

the others stay behind, chatting with police,
passing water cups, and congratulating
themselves on keeping the town safe.

In church the next day, I’ll watch
as one of them makes his way to the altar
and kneels on the green carpet,

praying, I’m sure, for this nation he loves
more than anything
to be delivered                to be saved.

*

January
or After Insurrection

Again, men get what they want with little fuss.
Write that fifty times in your best cursive.

Pretty snow gives way to ice,
lights go back into their boxes,
and wilted Poinsettia is thrown away.

Under the giant firs,
Blue Jays sprinkle the sidewalk
with peanut shells.

Most days I drive past one Fuck Biden banner,
a homemade sign that says Build the Wall,
and three thin blue line flags, defiant,

black and blue like a bruise or a body.
I take up a collection for reason’s sake.
The plate comes back nearly empty.

Thousands of miles away, at Big Springs
the rainbow trout beneath the bridge
stay put for good reason

and I wonder how they are doing,
if they are being fed, if steam is lifting
off the river between its powdered banks.

I’m sorry you’ve heard that, someone tells me.
For consolation, I crinkle the library book’s loose laminate
like I did as a child, inhale its slight sour stink.

*
Natalie Homer’s recent poetry has been published in Puerto del Sol, American Literary Review, Four Way Review, Ruminate, Sou’wester, and others. She received an MFA from West Virginia University and lives in southwestern Pennsylvania. Her first collection, Under the Broom Tree, is forthcoming from Autumn House Press.

Storytelling by Michael T. Young

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Storytelling

A man standing in the middle of 42nd Street said,
“Happiness is a cave with WiFi and my favorite beer.”

I believed him because he was naked
and the police were converging on him.

When he stretched out on the hot asphalt,
a pigeon crossed overhead from marquee to marquee.

That’s how I knew he was telling the story of our age.
Some reporter may write down his proclamations,

distinguish by them the gun from the plough,
and teach how stories caught in empty bottles

howl as long congressional breaths over their rims,
and other stories calcify into shells with seawater

cupped in their nacreous bowls. The differences in them
are that the final scripture etched in their salts

guides us to sip from troughs imparting the wisdom
that a hug is warmer than a smoking gun

and while your story is more interesting: hiking the Himalayas,
sharing shots of slivovitz with painters in Prague,

or your knees giving out at the World Trade Center Site
remembering you survived that day by two or three minutes—

it’s not my story. It would be thievery for me to tell it.
And though I was there that day too, I kept walking,

am walking still, so my story goes untold
because my knees are stronger, because telling a story

means stopping and sitting down, maybe with a beer,
maybe lying down on the hot asphalt until they carry you away.

*

Michael T. Young’s third full-length collection, The Infinite Doctrine of Water, was longlisted for the Julie Suk Award. His previous collections are The Beautiful Moment of Being Lost and Transcriptions of Daylight. He received a Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. His chapbook, Living in the Counterpoint, received the Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award. His poetry has been featured on Verse Daily and The Writer’s Almanac. It has also appeared or is forthcoming in numerous journals including Cimarron Review, Gargoyle Magazine, One, RATTLE, and Valparaiso Poetry Review.