Three Poems up at Diode 10th Anniversary, and How to Survive
- At January 30, 2017
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In Blog
- 0
Thanks to Diode for publishing three of my poems in their excellent and apocalypse-tinged 10th Anniversary Issue. You’ll find great poets in the issue, including lots of my friends, so be sure to check out the whole thing!
Many items in the news today made me think about how we survive. How we humans have survived genocide, wars, mass shootings, nuclear accidents, dictators, plagues, and we will also survive the Ugly Man and his reign of idiocy and bigotry. America will survive. But it made me think that this thing, America, is partly made of us, so we must all do what we can do make it the best place possible, to not wipe out hopes for immigrants, or the downtrodden, or the poor. That we must reach out to others as much as possible. That we must participate in the political system, or the political system will make short work of us. It’s a grim time, I think, one that will go down in history as dark and hostile, adding the Ugly Man to the list of Presidents who committed terrible atrocities – like how FDR turned away the Jewish refugees during the Holocaust – including Anne Frank and family, who were denied refugee status – because of the claim that Jewish people were spies for the Germans, or how he also locked up innocent Japanese citizens in camps. or how Andrew Jackson mass murdered the original occupants of America. But when bad things happen in America – when a bad, stupid man runs the country without anyone stopping him – it takes ordinary human beings, like us, standing up and demanding justice. It’s hard to stay involved. I mean, protests are great, but writing and calling your Senators is great too, maybe more important, donating money to good charitable causes – environmental and women’s causes spring to mind, but there are many more that the Ugly Man will make important – and being sure to vote when you can vote. These are difficult times. But we can still make a difference, so don’t give up.
And here are some nature photos from this last bleak week of January in the Seattle area – a sunrise and a creek with a windmill.
With that in mind, here’s a little poem for the day from Field Guide to the End of the World, “Lessons in Emergency,” which first appeared in The Atticus Review.