Through Light

I’m walking through the light in the poems
Americans can write: expansive skies, taking
the space to tell a story including the way
a writer feels as the story winds its way without
necessarily needing to underline any conclusions.

And I’m wondering about this side of the Atlantic
and how frightened we are by that massive sky
where everyone has a right and stands up to
fight for it but mostly just expects it to be there
over the prairies, the mountains, the sky-scrapers

whilst we boxed in by the weather drear
and the hopelessness of ourselves as subjects
to the crown and the police with their new laws
and ways of enforcing them as nearly a million
people have to line up for food from food banks

no matter how many hours we’re stuck inside
call centres and zero-hour contracts. And here
we all are, like chickens who’ve forgotten there
ever was a road to cross pecking at the feathers
of disabled people, the poor, immigrants, any

body close enough to draw blood from which
means just about everyone. Sky darkening
with drawn blood and everyone ducking out
of the way, frightened of the fall-out and how
it might show on our faces, the fear, the shame

that we couldn’t stand up and be counted
which means telling the real stories of how
oppressed we all feel and how we need to stop
hoping things will just get better if we just keep
ourselves neatly between the lines.

Hannah Linden is a Devon-based poet, emerging from Jo Bell’s 52 group. She has work published in Domestic Cherry 4, Nuggets and Nutshells, Poetry24, The Broadsheet, Wonderzoo, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Appletree’s Speak! anthology,  Ink, Sweat and Tears 2014/15 12 Days of Christmas feature and more by the time this goes to print: it’s been a busy year!  She tweets @hannahl1n