Paperweight Poetry

Meet me in the garden between my anguish and God’s, in the soft spaces where the flowers grow, and the soft spaces where they die; and, recognize me. Collect and recollect all of the parts of me that I don’t, and with characteristic immoderation, be dramatic, write them all down into poems and tuck them in the soft spaces, paint them onto your back and then slice it off and hang it on a wall and call it art.  Meet me in the garden between your chest and mine, and call me by your name, then maybe I’ll recognize me too. -anna sluder

My people are not nothing, we were just knocking on the doors of politicians’ souls that put up their “do not disturb” sign long ago. My people, did everything we could, we walked out of schools, took to the streets, and screamed, and whispered, we came with signs and only our hearts in our hands and one single voice. We wrote out a fill-in-the-blank bill to save lives, written in our very own blood, carved it in our backs, and promised all you’d have to do is sign. My people are something, my people are everything. We carry Mother Earth on our backs, to keep her orbiting around the sun, like a child sent to war, burying his brother alone, because their parents wouldn’t fight; instead they sat at home, stirring their cups of tea and calling us: too ignorant, too selfish, too young to understand. But, oh mama, though I have only two decades worth of tally-marks in my book, I have lived hundreds of years. My people. The sun-orbiters and earth-carriers,