A Poem for Women Marching in Washington on a Saturday

it will be the women who lead us, have led us, will keep us, will pick up weapon and quilt, steel and wool, will weather both sun and sacrifice, to eat sundune for pasture, raising earth out of moon, shedding tears of types beheld by Apollos and Nikes, held together by wombs, ribs, and sky. and so, we shall follow.

they will say things about our people, so we will sing back. back to walls, with sunken backs, sullen faces washed anew, hands and feet bare sans the wrinkle of work and water over centuries, washing over the dead, carrying the debt on shoulders bearing baskets woven out of love and empty, longing and despair, baskets full of fruit and newborn baby mesh touching the borders, soaking the barren. we are the tribes villages soldiers elders leaders community collective of wizards priests magicians brujas scientists lovers dreamers gypsies.

where have you been, flesh? taking tattered scales of fish, lining up their insides, sweet and salty still from boats, stinging with the contorted masses of slave blood, slick with oil and ledger, timber cut from the same limbs as man and oak where bones clink from hanging, banging against wind and mountain whisper. they cannot keep us here for long, no they cannot.