I do not think a headline poetry would interest people any more profoundly than the headlines.
(Sylvia Plath)
Plath’s verb interest sits too milquetoast,
for today’s headlines terrify, and that profoundly,
reminding me how, for decades, I shirked
citizenry, mistakenly secure, drawing on
assumptions like muffling, thinking gains
in health and welfare welded to bone and not
merely twine-tied. Each morning, new layers
fall away. I cough into my sleeve, my dis-ease
unchecked. I watch the toppling of what
I should have protected, the native birds
going down to brute scavengers, the
encroachment of weeds. How cleverly
even college has been branded suspect,
a payback for the looking down on, for the
liberality it fostered. Take away funding
and no one will study history. No one
will threaten the engines of commerce,
stopping them to retrieve the bodies of those
who topple into the machine. This morning,
Net Neutrality teeters, its fall another win
for the oligarchs. The new roaches, you and I
must scurry to avoid annihilation.
We must become ever cagier. Are you
interested yet? I would hope so, profoundly.
READ MORE
FCC Considers Ending the Concept of Net Neutrality [CBS]
FCC Plan Would Give Internet Providers the Power to Control What Users See and Use [Washington Post]
Trump Wants to Turn America’s Internet into an Ugly Version of China’s [Daily Beast]
Elitists, Crybabies, and Junky Degrees [Washington Post]
Devon Balwit is a writer/teacher from Portland, OR. Her poems have appeared here as well as in The New Verse News, Rattle, Redbird Weekly Reads, Rise-Up Review, Rat’s Ass Review, The Rising Phoenix Review, Mobius, What Rough Beast, and more.
