Ashley M. Jones
A rose, single, silent, and soft, opens—
red petals tender, innocent, fragrant.
What beauty! How holy! Peace, unbroken
in the rose's solid stem. O, ancient
wonder, rose of unsullied joy, I sing
to the majesty of your sun-loved face—
your color so pure, petal fine as wing,
leaf's thin veins a natural puzzle of lace.
Even your thorns are worthy of my praise,
their spikes but soldiers keeping you from harm,
a stab could set my fingers all ablaze,
but still your grace would silence all alarm—

     
except the rose was black and you killed it, black and you silenced it, black and you raped it, black and it could not vote, black and it got in the wrong garden so you had to use pesticide, had to poison its water and all the little black rose babies, had to stop teaching it to read, it was black so you pulled it up by the roots with a knife shaped just like America, just like the government, just like whiteJesus, just like your mouth leaking bless your heart, you severed its roots and you chewed them whole and you smiled as it withered, searching for home.
from the book REPARATIONS NOW! Hub City Press
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Censorship and truth suppression are on the rise, and this poem talks about an issue in the recent past where I was invited and uninvited from a speaking engagement in less than an hour. I can only guess, based on the response I received, that I appeared "too political" to speak as a professional author at a high school author fair.

Ashey M Jones on, "Poem In Which I Am Too Political To Read At Your School"
Color formal headshot of Sarah Ghazal Ali
Cherish and Remember: A Conversation with Sarah Ghazal Ali

"Filling her stanzas with daughters and mothers, women unacknowledged and named, Ali remains steadfast in her testament to the refracting light of family and belief, religious doctrine and lived experience."

via THE RUMPUS
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Front cover image of Jody Gladding's book, the spiders my arms
What Sparks Poetry:
Jody Gladding on [she is one who looks]


"Released from the bubble of voice, narrative, and image, words animate space differently—the degraded 'open space,' the space of the poem. They inhabit it, root, and evolve there. Perhaps they have always done so, they just needed to be freed from lineation and author/ity to make that clear. These are not my own words. They refuse ownership. You can read them any way you like."
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