by Drue BeDo

Hunkering, the inward coil wraps self into self. Ribs hug soul. Notice how, even as the air grows thin, concentrated breathing becomes the language of hope. We’ve been here so many times before. Snakes draw in before they strike. It’s how precision is crafted. Something sharp forms from such compression, yields the gift of alchemy so strong and focused that sidewalks tremble, each weed pushing slow and steady upward. We will defy the force of gravity. And there is such gravity! Our bones are shouting. So listen up: We are the earthquake. We are the tsunami. We are the natural disaster. Call us Hurricane Other. Track the magnitude of our genderfull, agefull, racefull oscillations on the richter scale of seismic transformation. Change is what’s coiling, what’s roiling, what’s calling. Fire and flood; we are the apocalypse. We are hauling our fifty-pound mattresses across unsafe campuses, incinerating the secret sanctified rulebooks of certain tenured professors, politicians, perpetrators whose lip service to social justice in the hallowed halls of white washed wishes and overpriced academe have now pawed one too many pussy. We are toppling the gargoyles, smashing them open in the commons of commonplace. We are airing the deadly laundry. We are standing in the streets, taking up space, exposing the playbooks. We are not singing and placing hands over pounding hearts, we are coiling (not recoiling!) on one knee, finding new notes, creating new scales, hear the hum of a revolution. Listen up pervasive persistent patriarchy! Feel the muscles attached to our thrumming bones; deep in our marrows new oxygen pulses. With air comes intensity. Feel the heat! Pogge, Cosby, Turner, Tag, Freeman, Simpson, Stockley, Pistorius, Wilson, Brantley, Ogawa, Taylor, Souza, Carruth, Danton. We are pushing, pulsing, pushing, pulsing. Pleading is no longer in our lexicon. Listen up! Our bones have grown weary of alleged, pending, questionable, unresolved, vague, purported, unproven, unsubstantiated. We are pushing. Sidewalks crack in every direction, miles and miles and miles. We are Other, Mother, Monster, Moving, Rising, Coiling, Roiling. We are Hill, King, Sanders, Ono, Sulkowicz, Lopez Aguilar, Carson, Kaepernick Union, Davis, Joyner, Graham, Smith, Oliver, Grandin, Hurston, Warren, Angelou, Levy, Tempest…. Yes, feel the tempest!

Other, Mother, Monster, Moving, Rising, Coiling, Roiling.

Author’s Bio:  Drue BeDo wields a small but powerful fist of words. Trained as an actor at Columbia University, she is first and foremost a playwright — published with Playscripts.com. In 2003, her adaptation of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata was performed all over the globe as part of a theatrical act of dissent against, then, President GW Bush’s decision to bomb Iraq. BeDo is currently working on a memoir, and privately coaching writers how to enliven their readings of prose and poetry.