Portside

You have to reach into the flag
and pull your life out

so that you can walk back into
the kitchen 
and think about making tea

and then listen to the voices
that ache the air around you

You have to understand what 
words cannot do

and feel on your body
where each sudden dream
might enter your bloodstream

well before you punch your fist
through the paper window

and start to write again

Beau Beausoleil is a poet and activist based in San Francisco, California. His most recent chapbooks are Poet as Naturalist, How Love Sustains Us, and War News. War News II, which responds to the Gaza War (from 12/9/23 to 6/3/24) appeared in 2025 from fmsbw press. A new book, Writing My Country, will appear in July from Raven and Wren Press in San Francisco.