This selection, chosen by guest editor Tierney Bailey, is from Yearn by Rage Hezekiah, released by Diode Editions in 2022.
Amends
You taught me
to foster rage
momentum
on the inside
of my woman-body
a vascular anthem.
I can say
the sick man’s prayer
by memory:
this is a sick person
how can I
be helpful to them
god save me
from being angry
thy will be done.
My own anger
a white flag
of concession.
I’ve laid down
tired mitts
& won’t hit
again. How lovely
to be out
of your range.
Swing
away.
You missed
the irony
that the poem
you redacted
confronts denial.
Secrecy a symptom
of our disease—
We’re only
as sick
as our secrets.
Still you sequester
bury shame
in the garden
of my childhood home
hide &
don’t heal.
But didn’t
the confessional
free you?
Didn’t
an anonymous man
absolve your guilt?
Mother
what freedom
I feel
to not be
yours.
Rage Hezekiah is a Cave Canem, Ragdale, and MacDowell Fellow who earned her MFA from Emerson College. She is a recipient of the Saint Botolph Emerging Artist Award and she serves as Interviews Editor at The Common. She is the author of Unslakable (Paper Nautilus Press, 2019) and Stray Harbor (Finishing Line Press, 2019). Rage’s poems have appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, The Cincinnati Review, The Colorado Review, and many other journals and anthologies.
Tierney Bailey is a Libra, a lover of science fiction and poetry, and is a dice-collecting gremlin. Currently, Tierney is Associate Poetry Editor with Sundress Publications, a copyeditor at Strange Horizons, Associate Editor with PodCastle, and a freelance graphic designer. She has earned a BA from the University of Indianapolis and a Masters Degree in Writing, Literature, and Publishing from Emerson College.
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