Protest Sounds
by Emily Perkovich
I was a battle cry. I was the shouting of many throats and the raising of many fists. I was feet treading concrete. And I was running on energy spent. I was fuel-level low. I was the pilot asleep in the cockpit. And I have been reborn as the plane crash. A lost fight. My script warped into three ceding letters, DNR. This is what democracy looks like when it resigns. Buckles. Succumbs. Submits. But it’s not so much a white flag. It’s more like they told me that humble pie tasted of sleep, and I was fucking exhausted. And I would have swallowed the fucking moon for a chance at peace. But I woke as the plane crash. And I know that sounds like the phrase giving up, but really the plane still explodes. The gasoline still burns. The fuselage will ignite when enough pressure is applied. Rattle my cage. I dare you. I am burying ghosts tonight in the hopes of bringing them back to life. Midnight resuscitation. Voice, cocked and loaded with bullets shaped like a resurrection spell. Me as the voice I lost along the way. I am drawing chalk outlines of what an activist looks like stuck in neutral, so that I can erase them with a jumper cable to the heart. Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock, boom. Remember me as the echo in the night. Remember me as impassioned. Remember me as ready to burn it all down. And when weeds grow through the ash, know that is me relearning to spread. That is myself as a wild fire. That is myself, conquering my own sleeping self.
Emily Perkovich (she/her) is from the Chicago-land area. She is the Editor in Chief of Querencia Press, a poetry reader with Split Lip Mag, and on the Women in Leadership Advisory Board with Valparaiso University. Her work strives to erase the stigma surrounding trauma victims and their responses. She’s a Best of the Net nominee, a SAFTA scholarship recipient, and a We Need Diverse Books grant recipient. She is the author of the poetry collections Godshots Wanted: Apply Within; The Number 12 Looks Just Like You; baby, sweetheart, honey; Manipulate Me, Babe—I Trust You; and lamb/&/slaughter, as well as the novella Swallow. Em is Otomí and learning to reconnect with her kin.
Photo by Alex Radelich on Unsplash