Falling
Falling
By Kathy Engel
over a box in my office
hard and awkward, bending
my arm, yelled at two sweet
students who came running in:
I’m fine! I’m fine! (Get out!)
I fell perhaps because
I’m getting older, because
I was rushing, not paying
attention, or empathy for
Jessie who fell the day before,
perhaps because I’m tired.
All my body knew after
falling was that I’d just
heard yet another story
from someone I call sister
who is a black woman in
America about doing big
work then getting shafted
by white women. I’ve
witnessed these stories, no
doubt somehow, sometime
in some way have been
complicit, even if by not
standing strong enough,
speaking loud enough or
not at all, not trusting what
I deeply know. I thought
maybe I should retire early
to open a space for a black
woman; it's fact that in
universities more women
of color are teased with adjunct
or visiting carrot than offered
full course meal. Maybe I fell
because no part of me knows
what theory, art making or
structure will adequately
address the unforgiveable.
So I fall. And get up. Not
alone. Along with the stories
my body plants,
carries
and hoards.
Kathy Engel is a poet and cultural worker whose books include Banish the Tentative, Ruth's Skirts, and with artist German Perez, The Kitchen. She co-edited We Begin Here: Poems for Palestine and Lebanon with Kamal Boullata and was a co-founder of Poets For Ayiti. She has co-founded, directed and consulted for numerous cultural and social justice projects including MADRE, Riptide Communications, Stand With Sisters For Economic Dignity, East End Women in Black, the Women in Prison Project, to name a few. Her new book of poems, The Lost Brother Alphabet, will appear with Get Fresh Books in March, 2020. She is currently Chair and Associate Arts Professor in the Dept. of Art & Public Policy, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU.