Sunday Afternoon as Oil Pours into the Gulf

[mercifulserpent]

Sunday Afternoon as Oil Pours into the Gulf

Across a small suburban lawn
a very large man is riding
a very large tractor mower
with a bin so the clippings
won't have to be raked

while his young son is driving
his miniature Hummer
around and around the cull-du-sac

and my large ass is planted
in a chair in the house,
AC blasting,
scanning the internet
for photos of the horror,
and feeling sick
as I view them.

-Elliott batTzedek


Used by permission.

Elliott batTzedek is finishing the MFAs in Poetry and Poetry in Translation at Drew University. She works as a literacy program designer, adjunct graduate school faculty, general gadfly in the face of the powerful, and co-leader of Fringes, a poetry-based, feminist, non-zionist havurah in Philadelphia. Her work has appeared recently in Poetica, Poemeleon, Trivia, Naugatuck River Review, and Sinister Wisdom.

batTzedek attended Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness 2008 and 2010.

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