subvert empire with us {poetry for lent}

I took a poetry class in college, and I loved experimenting with the genre in that somewhat small, cloistered space.  But - to be honest - I always felt that it was deeply unsafe.  I could pound out research papers with ease, write pointed editorials, craft smart personal essays.  But poetry?  Scared me to death.

How anyone has the courage to write (and share!) poetry astounds me.

Some of my friends have been reading and writing poems with me during this Lenten season.  Some of them are poets.  Others are not.  But we've decided together to have a poetry link up.  One day - Friday, April 4 - we're all going to post original poems.  They can be Lenten themed, or not. But we're going to share them with each other, in this public place.

For Lent, we're choosing to be vulnerable.  To welcome our weaknesses.  To hit "publish" on something that's not perfect. To subvert the empire that tells us our platforms need to be calculated, that our marketing strategies define us. 

Will you join us?  

In that spirit, here is a poem that I wrote ten years ago.  I think it was the last poem I wrote.. until this Lent.

Impediments 

 

Conversation at first came slow.

Eyeing, sizing each other up

Like animals, deciding to

Growl, befriend, or cattily ignore.

Conversation at first came slow to us.

Trying new notes like singers listening for

The harmony to a new song, halting

-ly stumbling through a few off-key measures.

You see, conversation at first came slow to us. 

Like delegates from two far-flung countries seated

Together at the dinner party, our polite

Attempts at a common language were just short-lived.

I would have been glad to have found us of the same species,

harmonizing to the same unheard song,

Both speaking romance languages.