photo : Peter Shefler, visual artist and poet

We collide in a tender fugue
reeds with slender necks
jostling against each other by wind
and circumstance 

We are fragile
beings rushing through time
as if it were of no consequence
bumps and bruises crushing 

red stains into our skin
panes where air is thin
and the soul breathes
more visibly

purpura witnessing
where words will not
How we suffer from small
wounds

we inflict unconsciously
intentional tramplings
in the fields. We wield
power carelessly

or not at all, watch silently
as another brother
goes down; a sister falls
in the moonlight

Oh, the terrible ways we fail
each other, refusing to speak
allowing the wind to carry our pain
over the horizon in soundless

ripples until — like wolves drawn to blood —
the ones with scythes come to cut
our necks and leave us rootless
from the land

…

Artist Statement: Art has a unique ability, even responsibility, to wake people up, to help them engage emotionally with fearful and disturbing subjects, and hopefully, stir them to action. Pablo Neruda said, ‘Poetry is bread’ and a tool for justice. I believe language is powerful and that poetry can indeed play a role in justice-making and social change.

Gayle J. Greenlea is an award-winning poet and counselor for survivors of sexual and gender-related violence. Her poem, “Wonderland”, received the Australian Poetry Prod Award in 2011. She shortlisted and longlisted for the Fish Poetry Prize in 2013, and debuted her first novel, Zero Gravity, at the KGB Literary Bar in Manhattan in 2016. Her work has been published in St. Julian Press, Rebelle Society, A Time to Speak, Astronomy Magazine and The Australian Health Review.