Vashti’s Name Corona | Alison Stone

Vashti

I’ll obey your order –
shake my booty,
sway my naked hips 
until the drunk guests moan.
I know what a woman’s body’s for.

But not alone.
Husband, drop your robe
and join me, your lined skin
and paunch becoming handsome
as we move together in love’s light.
Take my hand and start to shimmy.
Then I’ll dance.

from Caught in the Myth (NYQ Books, 2016)

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But Not His Name

Spring was lost to lockdown. Now it’s summer,
the air thick with humidity and fear.

Returned to work, we sweat into our masks.
The scientists are taken off the air.

I AM NOT A RACIST, the racist yells
while bodies pile up like bags of gold.

Cars honk for protestors carrying signs.
The ground trembles when stone generals fall.

It’s always about who has the power.
Years ago, at Ellis Island,

my grandfather, but not his name, allowed
to enter. Boats of Jews turned back to die.

What does it mean
to be American?

Official fireworks banned, my neighbor
provides a noisy, low-budget display.

Zimmerman autographs bags of Skittles.
Fake stallions watch through moss-covered eyes.

from To See What Rises (CW Books, 2023)

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April, with Corona

Spring sticks to the lesson plan –
blossoms, brash light, gaudy shades of red.
So much new life multiplying,
but the virus has its own math.
Subtraction, division, bodies
in freezer cars waiting for graves.
Close to a school, I used to hear
the children’s recess cries, but now there’s only birdsong
and sounds of this sudden storm – an odd flipping
between hail and sun-streaked rain –
that drives me inside to screams
from the TV and yowls from the cat.
I want to howl my own prayer 
or recrimination, but to whom?
The men in charge are deaf
to voices pitched like mine, and the wind
that shakes my windows isn’t God.

from To See What Rises (CW Books, 2023)

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©2023 Alison Stone
All rights reserved

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©2023 Alison Stone
All rights reserved

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The 2023 (Inter)National Poetry Month BeZine Blog Bash

Art: European Robin, pastels, ©2021 Tom Higgins

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