Resist

Visiting Teaching Artist James Meetze asked, What do you need to repeat to yourself in order to resist? He provided us this poem by Danez Smith as inspiration. (We highly recommend reading all of it here.)

principles 

Danez Smith

after JFK

i.

ask not what your country can do for you
ask if your country is your country
ask if your country belongs to your country folk
ask if your country is addicted to blood
ask if your country is addicted to forgetting
ask if your country is an oil & power fiend
ask if your country shakes at night starving
for bodies if bodies mean your country
keeps on being your country in the same ol’ ways
ask if your country was built of stolen land
and stolen breath, if democracy is a chain
tight as skin around your neck
ask if your comfort means elsewhere
someone is burying a daughter
ask if your comfort means round
the corner a man is dead cause a cop
mistook his body for a gun
ask if your comfort means broke schools
& food deserts on the other side of town
ask if your new apartment used to belong
to someone who couldn’t afford to look
like you, ask yourself if all the things
you are scared to admit are shovels
slowly filling up a brown boy’s throat.

[poem by Danez Smith. Continue reading here]

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PROMPT

Write a poem using the phrase you say to yourself in order to resist. This phrase will become an anaphora for the poem. In Smith's "principles" the anaphora is "ask if your country."

Anaphora is the repetition of a word or words at the beginning of a line or sentence. Learn more about anaphora here.