asking for a poet—an abbreviated abecedarian

~after Gwendolyn Brooks

ask us how we weather race bias

baked into the

cake of American life ask how we

Diaspora peoples endure

erasure how we

face down melanin-triggered cops and

ghosted by the medical system we disease ask

how we stomach slant

imprisonment and abide anti-

justice macro sentences for micro crimes ask how we

keep on despite sadness and madness how we passion we

lesson we

music blues and jazz we generation we

nation we

opinion we container or not ask how we

patriot more than the settler’s descendants ask how we

quagmire we fear we holy

roller we myth equality we

school we sorrow ask how we resolution we

trust we fiction ask how we

victory we labor we

zeal ask how we demise

-

Joanne Godley is a physician, writer and poet in Alexandria, Virginia. Her poetry is published or forthcoming in the Bellevue Literary Review and Mantis, The Poeming Pigeon and Kosmos. Her chapbook, Picking Scabs from the Body History was published last year and one of the poems received a Pushcart nomination. Her prose is published in the Kenyon Review (KR) online, Akashic Press online, and the Massachusetts Review.