#MeToo: Jean Day

Jean Day

 

 

from “Fallopian and What For”

 

Opening onto the meadow of it

having emerged wet from dark trees

with the ability to swivel our heads

the debate depends on what we can get

in trade:

camaraderie or the despair hysterics suffer?

Either way you may break your guitar

over the head of the premier

of our fine fat city

may approach the goose with a whoop

of riot but may not find it glorious

 

 

to be moved along.

I don’t mean to be radical

but kind of want to

stand around at least

brilliant in witness to the earth so large in its swirl of skirts

that we perceive it as flat and fall

into the ferment of the crowd

Do you want to make out?

in the ferment of the clouds?

See if I can change? Into pants?

It’s the way we do business here

in the oracle arena

 

 

On the other side of

Where we don’t wear

Even the idiot in me recognizes the pilgrimage

in this trivial pursuit

toward Cinderella’s hideout with its seven little men

and their hearts of platinum

            an army of bikes likes
            an army of unforgiveness

 

having gotten in over our heads

and sentimental about factories and mines

Liberty swings her lanterns

but the coal’s too deep, too dark

for just this reason

 

 

Belatedly.

The English for comrade is lady

snap caps (not poetry) on a hot sidewalk

in the small town of another’s bed

Let’s go there.

Where bears roll their windows down for you

and then do Dallas. Not

in poetry but two-fisted apostasy

hubcaps roll away toward sunset with a ding

and the armies of kind stitch,

bitch, and wait

 

 

At the millpond of the horizon for reinforcements

we skate the ice without getting wet

pretend not to know how not to fall in

It’s really not fair, fear

Pussy Riot’s in here

without passing the gas of Code Pink

commotion confirmed in the wind that has caused

some bells to ring in the desert

pots and pans to be beaten to death

by sundials that are sad by definition.

We do not fit in