local_library Loud, Loud, Loud

by Jessie Ehman

Published in Issue No. 261 ~ February, 2019

Let us dip our hands into the soft womb of earth

 

to retrieve what has long been buried—

 

hearts, keys, the television remote,

 

weather-warmed discs of beach glass

 

like tiny pieces of a cathedral window.

 

Let us bow our heads for all the times

 

we have tasted blood in the back of our throats,

 

times we have bitten our tongues clean through

 

in an effort to stay silent as men in white robes

 

feed us the salty brine of someone else’s words.

 

Let us dig up the graves at daybreak—

 

let us loose the ghosts of our former selves.

 

Let us be loud, loud, loud in the face of those

 

who would render us mute as sacrificial lambs.

 

Let us rattle the chains that shackle us

 

to the wrists of our enslavers.

 

Let us give voice to the passions that drive us—

 

let us scream, “hear this now,” as the great chorus

 

of our souls takes wing into the reckless wheel of night.

 

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My name is Jessie Ehman, I am 26 years old, and live in Puyallup, Washington with a room full of books and my three flat-faced cats. I graduated with my Bachelor's Degree in Poetry and Creative Writing (minors in Art History and Printing and Publishing Arts) from Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington (class of 2014). I am passionate about my home state, nap-taking, and writing poems about love, loss, and bears.