1/30

For the next 30 days, for National Poetry Month, many poets will be writing and posting a new poem online everyday. This is my first as a participant in the festivities, a free-write from a Humanities class I was substitute teaching for. Enjoy!

To Chairman Mao:

I am the grass.
I have let myself down into the resistance to say “stay.”
I will play to your posters sizes of buildings.
I will bow to your limo as it kicks dust
on the feet of your prisoner lovers
but I have laid myself so virus
that even after you have
heard radio talk of my
underground you
will never dig
out my last
riot.
I will be the sore spot in your eye,
the moon in your sky as you wish
to paint yourself with stars
I am the laughter at your funeral, the gravity
as you leap for pantheon
I am the humans buried in the Great Wall of China,
I am the bee stinging your fist and I am
never letting go.