Photography © Lauren Shear

 

RBG

Everything today makes me cry.
Hattie McDaniel, Rita Dove, Flannery shitting
on Baldwin, corona, a couple in Nevada who tried
to declaw their cat. Tennessee Williams
going crazy at the last there. It’s November,
no it’s September, and right before my eyes,
there’s the dog on the corner
of Dalzell and Highland, dead, swelled like a sausage,
unburied by her comitatus, announced on FB
for the edification and joining forces of the
Highland Restoration page. This day may as well
be another hollow black night despite daylight
like an 18 hour camera flash on the rednecks
who failed history classes hiding behind the gym,
smoking their dads’ Lucky Strikes, ripping girls’ clothes
off in their minds, and at this point in time
blocking early voters, grievously
making all clichés true and truer.
I want all my fucks back I gave my whole life.
So I could have saved them for this one day
When the world kills itself at such a high
speed, we almost don’t fear the stabs,
coming as they do like the cliched femininity
of spike heels, so decorative
so impractical, so elitist,
turning into expensive weapons,
thrusting deeper and deeper
into this united land of enemies.

 

Dorie LaRue is the author of two novels, Resurrecting Virgil, (Backwaters Imprint of the University of Nebraska Press, 2001) which won the Nebraska Prize for the Novel, The Trouble With Student Affairs (Artemis Press, 2019), three chapbooks of poetry, Seeking the Monsters (New Spirit Press 1993), The Private Frenzy, (Jazzbones Press,1992), In God’s Due Time: A Tribute to Mistress Rowlandson (Parousia Publishing, 2019), and a full length collection of poetry, Mad Rains (Kelsay Press, 2017). Her fiction and poetry and book reviews have appeared in The Southern Review, The American Poetry Review, and others. A twice recipient of a Louisiana Division of the Arts Fellowship in Literature, she lives in Shreveport, Louisiana, and teaches writing at LSUS.

Lauren Shear is a museum professional, public historian, and lifelong resident of Massachusetts. She has been working with activist groups since college and has been seeking ways to support communities under attack ever since. The photo above was taken from a recent vigil held in Boston’s Copley Square for Ruth Bader Ginsburg.