Poetry

FW photo

By

Anne Whitehouse

Protest Poem

In memory of Katie Lee (1919-2017)

I only had a decade in Glen Canyon,

from my first visit to when they destroyed it.

In that blissful time when I was a river runner,

I swam in its potholes and waterfalls

and explored its hundred side canyons, each one unique.

The rapids and the breezes blowing over them

spoke to me like dear companions.

When I was with them, I never felt alone.

When they drowned that place, they drowned my whole guts.

I will never forgive the bastards. May they rot in hell.

My human race betrayed me, greedy fools

with the mania to destroy all the sanctuaries.

I don’t care if we’re all blotted out.

I’d rather be a coyote.

Outside From The Inside

From Isamu Noguchi to Man Ray, Poston War Relocation Center, May 30, 1942

Here, in the internment camp

in the Arizona desert

our preoccupations have shrunk

to a minimum—

the intense dry heat,

afternoon dust storms,

and the difficulty of feeding ourselves

on thirty-five cents a day.

Outside from the inside

it seems history has taken flight

and passes forever.

Here time has stopped and nothing

is of any consequence,

nothing of any value,

neither our time nor our skill.

But I must remind myself,

work is the conversation

I have with myself,

and space is supplied

by the imagination.

Here, there is the memory

of ancient places,

wind and sun, endlessness,

where I came from,

and where I will go.

Oh, for a mountain peak,

a glacier glistening in the sun.

Oh, for an orange,

Oh, for the sea.

Anne Whitehouse

Anne Whitehouse is the author of six poetry collections, including The Refrain(2012) and Meteor Shower(2016) from Dos Madres Press. Her novel, Fall Love, is available in Spanish as Amigos y amantes. Her essays, “Poe vs. Himself,” and “Poe and Chivers,” appeared in New England Review andRascal Journal. You can listen to her lecture, “Longfellow, Poe, and the Little Longfellow War” here.