What They Taught us to Forget

The Poems

Return of the Know-Nothings

By: Nathan Large

We do not know the principles

of civil service, civic pride.

We do not know the sciences

that give us answers we dislike.

We do not know the common folk

or how they live their daily lives.

We do not know the foreigner:

what isn’t like us, we dislike.

We do not know of empathy,

or if we do, we think it weak.

We do not know of equity:

what’s need for you is less for me.

We do not know of courtesy:

we taunt and curse our enemies.

We do not know diplomacy:

we anger allies without need.

We do not know objective fact,

but slander truth and spread false tales.

We do not know subjective thought:

all deviation must be culled.

We do not know of common good:

we eat our seeds and frack our wells.

We do not know what’s possible,

just what’s been tried and thus far, failed.

We do not know our history

except the whitewashed names of men.

We do not know the tragedies

they wrought through their know-nothing plans.

We do not know what freedom means:

you’re free to do what isn’t banned.

We do not know what greatness is...

just use that name for what we want.

Art v. Authority

By: Nathan Large

Artists aren’t normally

Fond of authority,

Less when it levies restrictions,

Inflicting dictation

To limit creation

To only what fits its criteria.

When parties discard

All “degenerate art”,

Then you know that a nation’s in danger,

For wannabe fascists

Need ignorant masses

Confined to a uniform culture.

But art’s definition

Requires deviation,

Or else, you’re just copying ‘classics’,

And even those standards

Get purged of examples

That tend toward liberal ethics.

They’ll stifle the arts

Of minority parts,

Fearing proof that their scapegoats are human,

And treat as offense

Every work that insists

That the pluribus outranks the unum.

But rulers love ‘art’

When it kneels and applauds,

To promote and sing praises to tyrants,

Or when it’s a craft

Manufactured en masse

As a product that earns them a profit.

If the ‘art’ you create

Is approved by the State,

Then it’s time to assess your position.

For to do as you’re told

Is to rot in a mold,

And that’s death to a life of creation.

The Mark of a Beast

By: Lisa Spears

Run in a zig zag line

if you want to escape from an alligator

I hope to heed this advice if needed

having a dreadful fear.

I only walk by the marshlands,

even then with trepidation

in the light of midday.

I remember Florida and a family vacation

my daughter was walking the dog

and a sacrificial goose

it crossed their path by a pond.

Our dog lived to tell the story

back at the rented condo

her eyes still wide with fear

from the goose’s cry

when the gator crunched

the bone beneath the feathers.

It took hours for her to sleep,

to stop the pacing,

to stop trembling

from that could of been fate.

That could be the end of the story,

and none of us would be the worst off

unless, you are an immigrant

And someone grabs you

from the field,

from the courthouse,

from your yard.

Far to the middle

past the roads to resorts

lies a place so dank,

and so dark,

the light can hardly utter it.

It scares me to say it.

They will bring people there.

It scares me to say

in chains.

It scares me to say

up to five thousand faces.

Oh, the terror!

They are proud.

They are laughing.

The beasts lie in wait

as the swamp waters rise

Then, they snatch their prey.

They keep turning circles in the water.

The tight hold.

The cries of the other.

The gasping and gurgling.

Again, and again.

Syllabus Check: list of courses to cut

By: Rita D.Costello

If term is found, add to list, if not found continue to the next term on the list until all terms are exhausted:

Control-F "diversity"

Control-F "equity"

Recheck, control-F "equality"

Control-F "inclusion"

Recheck, control-F "inclusiv*"

Control-F "freedom"

Control-F "women"

Recheck, control-F "woman"

Recheck, control-F "gender"

Recheck, control-F "feminis*"

Control-F "black"

Recheck, control-F "race"

Recheck, control-F "diaspora"

Recheck control-F "African" (may be moved to list for internal review if accompanied by bothterms "white" and "south")

Control-F "native"

Recheck, control-F "indigenous"

Control-F "queer"

Recheck, control-F "sexuality"

Recheck, control-F "sex"

Recheck, control-F "gay"

Recheck, control-F "lesbian"

Assume "bi-" will not return results and may be skipped

Recheck, control-F "trans*"

Recheck, control-F "non-binary"

Recheck, control-F "non binary"

Recheck, control-F "lgbtq"

Recheck, control-F "pronoun"

Control-F "creative"

Control-F "critical"

Control-F "theory"

Control-F "intersectional"

Control-F "Marx"

Control-F "Foucault"

Control-F "Fanon"

Control-F "Freire"

Control-F "socialism"

Control-F "humanities"

Control-F "art"

Control-F "values" (may be left off the list only if term is accompanied by the word "math,""mathematical," "economic," "conservative," or "family.")

Completed lists must include a column for instructor name. Copy and paste instructor columninto a new spreadsheet saved as "professors to eliminate." Submit both spreadsheets ("list of courses to cut" and "professors to eliminate") to university and state offices, links provided below.

Courses for further internal investigation:

Control-F "alphabet" (if accompanied by the term "mafia" add to previous lists)

Control-F "fiction"

Control-F "read"

Recheck, control-F "reading"

Recheck, control-F "book"

Control-F "writing"

Control-F "argument"

Control-F "independent"

Control-F "free"

Praise Be

By: Rochelle Jewel Shapiro

the elderly, the middle-aged, and the young of all races

gathered in the icy streets, the signs on sticks

carried like a crucifix despite the risk

of being thrown to the ground, punched, kicked,

maced, and shot, shot, shot, 7 times, 10 times,

in the face, in the back. Damn the ever-growing

need for elegies and obits.

Praise be those who love their neighbors,

who bear witness, recording on cell phones for history.

Praise be the humanities course I took in college

that taught me that Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius,

and Confucius thought kindness was the crucial moral value.

Praise be the demonstration of this in the demonstrators.

Praise be the German philosopher Hegel, who proposed

that history goes in circles, that violence leads

to an era of peace governed by reason.

May it be.

We’ll show you a Witch-hunt

By: Morgan A. DePue

You find our misandry distasteful?

Well, you should have a taste of misogyny.

Women have gagged on it for centuries.

Tastes like filthy laundry

& soiled floors

& every other household chore.

Looks like the glass ceilings

we have to sweep up ourselves when we shatter

and so many shatter with them

not through them.

You never remember their names.

But we do.

We’ve been gathering the tools for millennia.

Scribbling secrets onto napkins with dried out pens.

Coding them into our memories.

Passing them down in genetics

kept generational note of all the tests you gave us.

We kept them special.

Knew we’d need them.

Stored them safe in the collective synapses of oral history

We know our history

& you are gonna repeat it.

Now that we’ve remade our chains into shields

you want to be us

finally know a jealousy

that recognizes greed and lust as meaningless.

No.

You don’t get to call this back.

We’ve stepped into this name.

We are the witches you didn’t know to burn.

We are the embers

Prometheus picked from the sun.

& we’ll show you

a witch-hunt.

We’ll make baptismal fonts out of bathtubs

knowing your egos will keep you afloat.

Better still, we’ll throw you in the river

one with a chemical spill

or an oil slick

already on fire.

Let the water be the judge.

Make you recite the parts of your Bible

that teach: Love, Compassion, Acceptance, Kindness, Generosity

We’re betting you forgot those parts.

More like never memorized them.

Preferred your pieces soaked in blood flooding from the hands of your god.

Make you strip at a public hearing to check for marks

paint your bruises and genitals rape-kit blue

every mole, scar, blemish, tattoo suspect & subject to

–swab & photography –

Make sure you’re the one on trial

since our reputations are at stake.

Line up juries of survivors

all of us

whores,

queers,

queens of color.

Finally teach you what it means to know fear.

Finally see you wear the eyes of deer caught in spotlights.

Finally set fire to all this timber we’ve piled upon your pyres.

& after

we’ll remake this world.

Cause, no.

You don’t get to call this back.

We’ve claimed this name.

We are the witches born to bear witness.

We are the keys

to unlock the resistance.

We’ll flower this rebellion into resilience.

Feed the soil bonemeal from the burned bits of your remnants.

We’ll conjure peace on the graves of your violence.

We’ll cast spells over our houses.

You won’t even know our names.

You’ve already forgotten.

But, we promise.

We’ll show you a witch-hunt.

Transmutation

By: Morgan A. DePue

What we know of brokenness

is the true resilience of fragility

how the façade of invincibility

is the armor of those most prone to splintering

but those splinters spiderweb

into something stronger

cracks soldered in the golden ferocity of survival.

What we know of vulnerability

is how it opens us to injury

undresses every mask we’ve made to survive

what life made of us

what it’s done to us

how it bares the truth of our being

with irrevocable honesty

a windowless transparency.

What we know of being

is that every web winds into one

how every woven thread has led to this very moment

stitching every entity into this eternal tapestry

where every tree, stone, water, creature

perpetually morphs into the next being

the entirety of existence flowing endlessly into each other

each cell, atom, infinitesimal iota of energy

all shared

all interrelated eons mapped into moments

all evolving to embody the awareness

of all these relations

to know the brokenness of one

is the brokenness of all

that the resilience of one

protects the web for us all

that the bare honest vulnerability of one

is the healing of us all

that the love for, of, and by one

is the love of us all.

shooter’s mass

By: Lauren Tivey

all hail st. armalite / clad in his tactical gear / his crown of bullets / leering newspaper smile /his is the ecstasy / of a hot rifle, rapture / of spent shell casings / he is everywhere / wandering the land / from stately mountain to tawny desert to glittering sea / showering his carnage upon the innocents / sacrificial lambs for the cult of the ar-15 / under the holy and dusty word / of the 2nd amendment. / with bump stocks, high-capacity magazines / he wanders, he shoots, he places / the mangled corpses upon the nra altar, as their priests / spout thoughts and prayers for our pain / tell us it’s not terrorism, it’s freedom / that firearm worship is the law / get onboard or else. / ah, america, with your communion / of blood and madness / slouching toward our classrooms to kill us; / it’s our right, they tell us, as the pigs in suits / pocket bribes while squealing / about the sanctity of life. / here’s something to remember, washington, / about your darling, gun-toting messiah: / he will turn against you / as a snake devours its own tail / and destruction and evil revisits its creator. / be warned, hell awaits / and its fluorescent, gore-flecked corridors / are filled with the bodies of your loved ones.

Death of Intellectual Freedom

By: Rita D. Costello

That intellectual spark...

Tell me, which teacher inspired you by how closely

They followed the SLOs, how clearly they wrote

Their standards? (But never mind that, professors

No longer get to set their own standards--we do not

value degrees or expertise here-- let alone

Write them.) Tell me about how you picked that course

Because it promised to be boring, promised not

to introduce you to anything new, nothing challenging, nothing

That might make you think or change

Your mind. Which cut and paste policy made you a better person, parent, friend, better

At your job. Why go into debt for standards? Cookie cutter

Pablum. Without challenges, thinking, growing,

You would probably learn more of the world and humanity--feel

More intellectual spark--institutionalized

than in any class at our Institution...and that type of captivity is sometimes free.

In a State with the Most Banned Books

By: Carolina Hospital

he finds a blueprint to house words

and measures

he saws wood, screws hinges and staples

gray shingles

he sands the edges of its shelf and paints

the whole thing blue

(after adding an attic hole for birds

and a starfish for good luck)

then he sorts the thrift store finds

like a second-hand librarian

and waits for the little door to creak under

the sun and flapping wings

Jesus is Too Woke

By: Carolina Hospital

What Would Jesus Do?

Ban non-conforming books.

Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye

and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?

Deny Medicaid for the poor.

It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick…

whatever you did for one of the least of mine, you did for me.

Refute women’s self-determination.

Someone touched me; I know that power has gone out from me…

Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.

Negate migrants justice and dignity.

Hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected

the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness.

Criminalize the homeless.

Come, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

Outlaw diversity, equity and inclusion.

For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? And if

you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others?

Fire those speaking about LGBTQ or slavery.

I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also…

and there shall be one flock…

Ban non-conforming people.

The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men…

What to do about Jesus?

(Lines in italics from Matthew 7:1, 3 / Mark 2:7/ Matthew 25:40 /Luke 8: 46,48 / John 8:7 / Matthew 23:23 / Matthew 11:28 / Matthew 5:46 / Matthew 13:47/ John 10:16 / John 10:16 / Luke 24:7)