Paperweight Poetry

I pity F what did he ever do but help create words Forming words to roll off your tongue by pressing your teeth to your bottom lip and speaking I pity U what did she ever do to be crossed out Is her condemnation a direct correlation From leaving q to make another word? I pity C All she ever did was make beautiful words Like crystal and concinnity Chaos and cadence. I pity K What did he ever do but get mixed up with c? And his identity isn't his fault He is just a posture in a room full of dancers Perhaps what confounds me Is how when four letters stand alone they are innocent But when joined together they are a disgrace? One syllable, three consonants, one vowel. Yet other four letter words are lovely in poise and style But this four letter word is crossed out, beeped out, voiced over and out Out, out, out Like a sinner excommunicated from a church of sinners And what holy priest was to say this four letter word is worse than another? What hypocrite decided

You know that minor abyss between afternoon and evening? Where the clouds haze over the sun Or it could even be the moon Well that's the way that the devil plays too. -anna sluder

You're in first grade and you sat on the side of the bus seat Where your body is cramped by the hump of the bus tire The place where no one wants to sit But you have been sentenced to. Your kneecaps jab into your chest and the air is sticky and thick You can't breathe as your whole body contorts And you know, you know you shouldn't sit on that side because you always sit on the uncomfortable side While the boy you sit with gets to stretch his legs out And you smile and say okay when he asks you to sit there Because you're a girl and he's a boy And mama says to let the boys win. Always. Let. The. Boys. Win. Even if that means your lungs turn into pin-pulled grenades And your legs are numb like static Because you cannot even accidentally touch his knee And in class you would squeeze your lips closed And swallow the suffocation of holding your breath Because Nick across from you told you that you breathed too loud At lunch you didn't eat because

Finding hope in a tragedy Is like looking through a window at night All you can see is the reflection of your face And the streetlights of your pain When all you want to see is one damn star. -anna sluder

The trees have copyrighted me I have been patented and signed for by the wind The sea has adopted me as one of its own I have been published by the stars I was written into a womb as an idea And taken to life with the first cry of a story And I have lived life and I have loved well For I have been titled by the moon And authored by the sun. -anna sluder

There's a heart between these bones A world you have yet to roam So don't treat it like a stark desert For it's a grove of flowers more than dirt So next time you forget Put your hand against my chest And feel it beat just like your own heart Like sun at dusk that wishes not to part. -anna sluder

I am yet to understand why the little wooden people That dress in privilege and wear their white paint job with bias Are considered the majority simply because of numbers When onyx is the hue of the earth that holds us all up When chestnut is the pigment of instruments that fill me with music Black is the shade of the infinite universe that we inhabit Amber is the color of the trees that bloom around me In fact I have seen more dark colored things than light colored things Yet the little wooden people that wear their color with fear That are forced to dress in a lack of privilege by the white wooden people they meet Are considered the minority instead of the majority And it is strange that the wooden people painted white Persecute the wooden people wearing their colors proud Colors the white wooden people would be if they hadn't painted themselves For wood is naturally brown. -anna sluder