Raising the oars of our flag
we drift
past all the bodies that make up
the childhood of our history
past all the lives that had to be
crushed to create wealth
Oars down into resistance
we pull towards the cities
that first dreamed us
even as they fill with glaciers
of blood-ice
even as they threaten to sink
this outcast rowing-boat of liberty
that is moved by many many hands
Beau Beausoleil is a poet and activist based in San Francisco, California. His most recent chapbooks are, Poet as Naturalist (Raven and Wren Press), How Love Sustains Us (Barley Books (U.K.)) and War News (daily poems responding to the first three months of the genocidal war in Gaza), which appeared as a free online ebook published by Agitate! Journal. Published this year is a second volume in the War News series, War News II (12/9/23 - 6/3/24), published by fmsbw press in San Francisco.
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