December Spotlight: The Lights That Never Went Out
Chicago Poetry Center Collaborative Poem
Click on the video to watch the team read their lines. Video by Gabrielle Nelson.
Linked Lines for 2020
By The Chicago Poetry Center Team
With special thanks to Gabrielle Nelson for compiling us
As the battle between affirmation and information continues in a virtual world of our making
I’m grateful that laughter can travel through microfibers
I nearly forgot to remember
all of the kind people who continued to be kind
the lights that never went out
If this year was my pre-k teacher, If this was a zoom class, all of us her eager students, she would ask us to unmute our lonely silence,
This beast of a year, clawed and mouthy
a beast of the interior, a quiet room, some extra sleep,
Looking up past the glassy surface of a pool,
I see the year as a cicada, rising out
of the earth with a piercing, longing shriek.
This year tasted like the shift
from summer to fall,
when leaves start to tumble
and the ground growls
with a crunch.
It took the mail, millions
of ballots that shook us, red and blue and left
us purple and bruised.
A year to refocus / on a more perfect vision / of a more perfect union
the prescription / bifocals / blended / no visible lines
2020 is a tsunami of statistics whose waves ebb and flow like tides with minds of their own
From a forgotten – not exotic – land come flavors that recall
The forbidden earth, bitter rains, and gray days.
This year tasted like mud.
It is like being swept up in the arms of a tornado, your emotions unanchored by gravity.
If this year was a weather pattern it would be a blustery blizzard with black ice,
This year is a 770 mile long derecho, slapped across the midwest,
a night black storm at 10am,
When I’m laying down, I can’t tell if it’s the red line zooming by or if it’s really that windy outside,
Our hope is that you will leave just as you came,
Cold. Messy. Barren.
Yet full of hope and optimism.
2020 has felt like walking against a never ending gust of wind,
I can’t predict its next blow,
Will it scoop me up?
Fear,
Though each day I keep pressing against the odds.
See ya, 2020. Thank you to the many human lights that burned bright to get us through this one.
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