OUR VOICES, OUR RESISTANCE!

Judyth Hill of PEN San Miguel de Allende has organized an international presentation of poets from around the world  bearing witness to global struggles, human and environmental. As a member of her chapter of PEN, I'm proud to share my poem, Building Alliances

Building Alliances

“There’s been too many ripoffs for too long”

-Leo Lyyoki

If I had a hammer

& not the one that busted

in my hands as organizers are

busted for planting

trade union pegs

to stretch the corporate tent

A hammer that wouldn’t

buckle under

to repeated blows

Merciless sun baking sidewalks

Tools pushed to their limits

Snapping under pressure

If I had a hammer

forged of the Mother’s fury

yet tempered with love

for all her relations

two-legged four-legged

buried stone or spiraling seed

A hammer shaped to

the will of the people

Nothing could stop us

from driving a nail through

the heart of the beam

to begin the reconstruction

Building alliances

powerful as the wind

that rips a roof to shreds

or sweeps a prairie clean

The order of the reading has changed to:

Iya Kiva: Ukraine PEN ~

 Linda Marie Baros: French PEN

Inga Gaile: Latvian PEN ~

 Pam Uschuk: PEN America

Diane Régimbald: PEN Quebec ~ 

Bana Baydoun: PEN Lebanon

Dragica Čarna Slovene PEN ~ 

Ma Ma Thiri: Myanmar PEN

Cristina Wormull PEN Chile ~

 Arinda Daphine: Uganda PEN

Veera Tyhtilä: PEN Finland ~ 

Anise Jafarimehr for Zeinab Yousefi: Kurdish PEN

Wezi Msukwa-Panje: Malawi PEN ~

 Aziz Isa Elkin: Uyghur PEN

Art Goodtimes: San Miguel PEN ~ 

Stella Nyanzi: Uganda PEN