The election is right around the corner. Suffice it to say, many Americans are feeling anxious about the outcome of the election. The majority, in fact, call it very important whether they belong to the left or right side of the aisle. Poetry is about discerning the truth from complicated images and topics, though, which is why we’re partial to Medium’s Election 2020 collection of poems called “Resistance.”
Emma Briggs’s “Anticipation” sums up how we all feel right now. It encompasses the darkness we all see in the future, but remains optimistic in its message:
‘Like waiting for a biopsy.’
Indeed,
and I’m not even directly affected.
This last week
is not easy:
a daily escalation
of tension.
‘What if?’
Try not to slip
down the terror spiral.
Try not to trip out
on how it’s so wrong.
Focus on those
small signs of light
in this dismal tunnel.
Keep breathing,
stop reading
the comments.
Everything ends,
remember;
finally life
will cycle on
and around
as usual.
Sherrye Richardson asks “How Broken Are We?” in another practical poem. How many of us can relate to the idea that we as Americans are living in a fractured, broken society struggling to recover from its differences — even as we’ve struggled for hundreds of years?
Misery master
Destroyer of dreams, killer
Of hope and teller of lies
Surrender
Recover
Give more, go hard
Lay down, stay down
Choices, decisions react
Going forward
Some days nothing matters
Others down and blue
Reach to find
The stolen soul
Not quite defeated
Rise up America
Gail Walter shared “We Shall Not Be Moved” in order to showcase how the past can tell the story of the present and future:
“Tomorrow the invasion begins in earnest, and it is an invasion with all the implied violence. It is the feeling of flat on the ground, face in the gravel, something heavy in the middle of the back so that the stomach has nowhere to go. It is a posture of death. It is a posture that cannot sustain life. Parts of the dying earth fill my mouth so that I cannot breathe and cannot speak.”
Read the rest here.