Most of us are glad to see 2016 go. The rise of a racist, sexist, xenophobic demagogue has brought into relief our country’s deep investments in systemic racism, mass incarceration and deportation, police militarization, and plutocracy.
And yet we’ve also seen people of good conscience resisting. The Standing Rock Sioux’s sustained peaceful demonstrations persuaded the Army Corps of Engineers to reroute the Dakota Access Pipeline. Progressive religious leaders in North Carolina are performing civil disobedience on “Moral Mondays.” Writers and artists are producing great, socially conscious work, and arts organizations are uniting to encourage it. As an editor, I’m happy I get to host writing which speaks to our diversity and our capacity for resistance.
For the poetry section’s final post of the year, I’m reintroducing you to 6 poems we’ve published that I think are particularly pertinent. Some celebrate, some challenge, some lament; all invite critical reflection about our present historic moment. I also encourage you to submit work for our upcoming Xenophobia and Immigration theme so that this section can continue speaking boldly and directly to injustice in 2017.
Thanks for writing, reading, following, and sharing. Here’s to hope and progress in the new year.
-Charlie Bondhus
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“How Will I Know When I Am in a Body?” Nora Meiners
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“County Line Poem” Ashley Inguanta
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“A.M. Radio” Dwight Gray
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“Monkey Hill” R.G. Evans
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“Imagined Letter from My Father to His Father” Steven Sanchez
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“Of Black Hands Building Beatboxes, or Hearing the Beautiful Man”
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Special Call for Poetry Submissions–Immigration and Xenophobia
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Interested in submitting poetry to The Good Men Project? Check out our guidelines.
Photo by John M. Cropper/Flickr