NewVerseNews Friday: THE SILENCED MAJORITY
by Katherine West
Graphic by Katherine West.
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The silenced majority that some day will decide which small piece of the sky belongs to them —Rigoberta Menchú quoted in Poetry Like Bread.
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70% of Americans don’t trust politicians to make abortion policy. —19thNews
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Today it is cloudy I can’t see the sky at all I have to imagine it the way it was when I was young when life was a blue door opening on an even bluer even bigger sky Some days the sky was so blue it was almost purple and I could see all the way to Mexico The birds seemed to fly higher farther taking me with them to new lands where all the women grew wings wrote books started businesses ran for office got married, or not bore children, or not became stronger as they aged It was a blueberry sky with something infinite about it, an exuberant potential I gobbled this up when I was young— it became my marrow and a good thing too since the clouds seem to be here to stay I carry infinity inside me a multitude of blue doors that I open one by one day by day And there are others doing the same all over the world The sky is falling and we we are patching it putting it back up wiping it clean of clouds We are passing out binoculars to those with faulty vision We are leaving blue footprints behind everywhere we go We know there are those who erase our footprints who tell everyone they meet that we were never here But we are here We aren’t going anywhere— and there are a lot of us
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Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near Silver City. She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and Riddle, as well as one novel Lion Tamer. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Writing in a Woman's Voice, Lalitamba, Bombay Gin, The New Verse News, Tanka Journal, Splash!, Eucalypt, Writers Resist, Feminine Collective, and Southwest Word Fiesta. The New Verse News nominated her poem "And Then the Sky" for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. In addition she has had poetry appear as part of art exhibitions at the Light Art Space gallery in Silver City, New Mexico, the Windsor Museum in Windsor, Colorado, and the Tombaugh Gallery in Las Cruces, New Mexico. She is also an artist.