Portside

Laughter

 By Joanne Durham

in honor of Kamala Harris

Laughter leaps borders.

Laughter releases bitterness from my tongue.

Is it a crazy laugh or laughter for a crazy world?

You can tell a lot by a laugh*.

Laughter doesn’t need to sit at the head of the table.

You can’t bulldoze laughter.

Laughter loosens clenched fists.

Laugh me into your fear. Who laughs alone?

Infinite peals of laughter fit on the head of a pin.

Rain of laughter bathes a breathless sky.    

Belly laughter lightens the mind.

Children aching from laughter never forget that joy.

A woman’s laughter sings, I am more than sorrow.

If laughter is a cackle, please, bewitch us.

*Comment by Harris’s Republican opponent for 2024 Presidential election.

Joanne Durham is a retired educator living in the swing state of North Carolina, where laughter is an important part of keeping up the fight. She is the author of To Drink from a Wider Bowl, winner of the Sinclair Poetry Prize (Evening Street Press 2022), and the chapbook, On Shifting Shoals (Kelsay Books 2023). Her poems appear in Poetry South, Vox Populi, Writers Resist, The Inflectionist Review and many other journals and anthologies.