What Sparks Poetry is a serialized feature that explores experiences and ideas that spark the writing of new poems. In The Poems of Others, invited poets pay homage to the poems that led them to write. Each Monday's delivery brings you the poem and an excerpt from the essay.

Jayne Cortez
My friend
they don't care
if you're an individualist
a leftist   a rightist
a shithead or a snake
They will try to exploit you
absorb you   confine you
disconnect you   isolate you
or kill you

And you will disappear into your own rage
into your own insanity
into your own poverty
into a word a phrase a slogan a cartoon
and then ashes

The ruling class will tell you that
there is no ruling class
as they organize their liberal supporters into
white supremacist lynch mobs
organize their children into
ku klux klan gangs
organize their police into
killer cops
organize their propaganda into
a device to ossify us with angel dust
preoccupy us with western symbols in
african hair styles
inoculate us with hate
institutionalize us with ignorance
hypnotize us with a monotonous sound designed
to make us evade reality and stomp our lives away
And we are programmed to self-destruct
to fragment
to get buried under covert intelligence operations of
unintelligent committees impulsed toward death
And there it is

The enemies polishing their penises between
oil wells at the pentagon
the bulldozers leaping into demolition dances
the old folks dying of starvation
the informers wearing out shoes looking for crumbs
the life blood of the earth almost dead in
the greedy mouth of imperialism
And my friend
they don't care
if you're an individualist
a leftist   a rightist
a shithead or a snake

They will spray you with
a virus of legionnaire's disease
fill your nostrils with
the swine flu of their arrogance
stuff your body into a tampon of
toxic shock syndrome
try to pump all the resources of the world
into their own veins
and fly off into the wild blue yonder to
pollute another planet

And if we don't fight
if we don't resist
if we don't organize and unify and
get the power to control our own lives
Then we will wear
the exaggerated look of captivity
the stylized look of submission
the bizarre look of suicide
the dehumanized look of fear
and the decomposed look of repression
forever and ever and ever
And there it is
from the book ON THE IMPERIAL HIGHWAY: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS / Hanging Loose Press
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Cover of Jayne Cortez' book, On The Imperial Highway: New and Selected Poems
What Sparks Poetry: 
Evie Shockley on Jayne Cortez' "There It Is"

"Cortez’s trademark use of enumeratio—a rhetorical device that builds the force of an argument by offering detailed lists of the parts, causes, or effects of an issue—drives home the ruthlessness of this class of people: “They will try to exploit you / absorb you    confine you / disconnect you     isolate you / or kill you.”  Enumeratio forms the poem’s fundamental structure."  
READ THIS WEEK'S ISSUE
Black-and-white image of a young June Jordan
"Getting Down To Get On Over"

"Readers have never been more ready to receive Jordan’s unsparing yet finely wrought works, distilled in this collection to the most powerful selections. “The Bombing of Baghdad,” from Kissing God Goodbye (1997), emerges as a standout poem that interrogates the nation, the world, and the poet’s intentions."

via THE ADROIT JOURNAL BLOG
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