Jonathan P. Baird

This Marge Piercy poem appears in the September 2020 issue of Monthly Review. She has graciously given me permission to reprint it. I would note that she has a new poetry collection On The Way Out, Turn Off The Light coming out at the end of September. It is published by Knopf and it will have a whole section of political poems in it. She also has a book of short stories The Cost of Lunch, Etc from PM Press. It is now out in paperback.

I wake every day to this

Marge Piercy

Cruelty seems to win votes.
The shouter is heard. The whisperer
shot to silence. Words turn
to worms and wriggle in our food.

We live in times dangerous
to butterflies, polar bears and us –
The 99% who don’t count.
I bathe in cold fear each dawn.

The news is a rabid bat.
Government is a deadly virus.
There’s no refuge from slow
murder by the state, pollution,

toxins on our plates, plastics
in our blood. Fast murder
by police. The ocean wants
to kill us for poisoning it.

We are a pox upon the earth.
Bees sing repent! Change
before we all die. Do you want
an earth where cockroaches rule?