Wisconsin's Poet Laureate and 2021 Rubinger Fellow Dasha Kelly Hamilton recites two of her poems, Hope is a Bruise and Bones.
Hope is a Bruise
Paintball pellets batter shoulders
and thighs at 190 miles per hour
I count the purplish bruises and
smile at the post vision of us toasting
laughing, being vibrantly alive
The woman who pierced my nose
Rushed outside afterwards for a cigarette
Whether my nostril or her nerves were to blame
We both survived an ordeal that day
I don’t think of the sweat on her lip
or the tears on my cheek when my jeweled
Black nose disrupts canonical spaces
Agony delineates child bearing from child rearing
Pain is the anticipated toll: the impossible stretch of skin and orifice,
wrenching of organs, the pinch and nip of nursing
I received no pamphlets about the pangs of panic and impotence
The deep marrow rupture when their ache explodes beyond your reach
A formation of police fired rubber bullets at my child
200 feet per second in defense of hatred and spiteful ignorance
She raged back in protest until her throat rasped, her heels
blistered and she shattered into sobs once safe in our home, in my arms
They gassed and maced my baby. She marched again the next day.
And the next and the next and the next and the next
Hope is a bruise, a nervous smoke and an unrelenting calvary
Bones
There are 206 bones in the human body
More than half of them are in your hands
54 left
54 right
Bones give shape to our bodies
They are the production centers for red blood cells
The storehouse to minerals and healthy fats
Bones are living tissue
If more weight is placed upon a bone than it can bear
It will break
6.8 million people break a bone every year
Arms and hands most common, clavicle most likely
The only bone that will not break
Is your hyoid bone
The only bone in your throat
It holds the weight of your tongue, the bulk of your story
The heft of your truth
The hyoid bone is the only bone not connected
to other bones
The only
One
Held in place by muscle and ligament and prophecy
Like you, held in place by purpose
Therefore, you must speak.
Lift the bricks of history from your belly, and you speak
Reach between the folds of your insecurities, your curiosities
Your indignities
You speak
Set free the transcript of your story
Release the declaration of who you think you are
Swallow down the weight of the wicked who want
To snap your spirit in two - they cannot break you
You were constructed to fling fierce language at your dreams
To verbalize your very intention to
Be
Your words
are your storehouse. Your words are your production center
They define the essential elements of you
Protect the most fragile parts of you
So press your truth into the wet flesh of your tongue, and speak
Trust the manufacture of your body and your reality, and speak
Stake a claim on this moment
Called your life
There are 206 bones
in your body
All assembled
And waiting
for you to
speak
© 2021 Dasha Kelly Hamilton