What’s Up?
The sun. The sun is up.
In my garden the chives are up
out of the warming earth, eight inches tall
already in their cluster of slender greenness.
In Minnesota more snow.
In Madison, more unpermitted singing.
In Milwaukee, in suburban St. Francis,
the Overpass Light Brigade holds up
WATER = LIFE.
In Chicago students stand up
and walk out on standardized testing.
On the downside,
in Bangladesh, a garment factory collapses
and people sewing clothes for Walmart
are crushed in the rubble.
In Senegal, used clothing from the US is up,
is now the second largest industry,
putting small tailors out of business.
In my workshop, one of the poets wishes
godspeed to a dying uncle who abused
many of her cousins, his nieces. This uncle,
a ninety-one-year-old doctor, not a healer.
On the English coast, a balmy mist.
In English, parts of speech ease their boundaries
In Turkey, tesekkur, protestors rise up
to save the green of Taksim Square
In Spanish, la lucha continua.
Margaret Rozga has three books: 200 Nights and One Day, Though I Haven't Been to Baghdad, and the newly published Justice Freedom Herbs [http://www.wordtechweb.com/rozga.html]. Her Pushcart Prize nominated essay “Community Inclusive: A Poetics to Move Us Forward” is included in Local Grounds: Midwest Poetics. She leads poetry workshops throughout Wisconsin where she lives and nationally.
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