Poem by Sawnie Morris

The Revolution is Being Phoned In


Grackles wake us with granular croaking    as strong opinions are
exchanged between yellow roses.  Like the  mourning   doves,   
cow-birds   have ventured  north   
from   their previous, now-too-hot habitat.   Their voices   rip  
the air, rusty  zippers, while  inside the pocket  of 
a Walmart  purse,  a prisoner  tucks a cry for help.  

Where is that poet, now?    Who 
will you  write to?  What corporate 
“head?” 

Don’t put your money where the torture is,   a  seasoned warrior   says.  


                     So the dandelions – – 
faces tilted in daylight – –   fell,  

                    star-shot     in the   night  . 

Wild iris & garlic stems spurt

                            undeterred, into the 

anxiety  of  the    global   gravitational   field.    

Some gloom-times you lie on your back in the damp grass, look 
at the night-tide         feel       bottomlessness; 

your body pressed against the planet, you cling 
by your nails 
because the risk of 
decline  is 
        real . 

How does the pine feel about   grackle racket?   
Perhaps  the  liveliness  of magpie & myna bird banter 
in one’s   upper    branches   is   a   pleasure   
after the mineral life.  Perhaps the rock wall never meant
to be a border   &   is  breaking  down  now  in   
subversive  dishevelment.    


            Sand   channels 
make   riverine  
        paths      between   
     jag-
        ged    teeth   of   

patio   flagstone,   preparing us   for
Mars.    Beyond the fence line    the groan   of 
a truck   switching  gears    tears  
at your attention  –    

                Life    expects something. 

A flat bush fir lifts its candelabras. 


An isolated tulip, un-
noticed until now, flairs 
the glaring red of its petals. 

American crow succumb to a water fight of 
words, while in the stream of the present 
tense,  the  earth, as  we’ve  known  it ,   writhes .    

The volte   poem-voice  reports  a black butterfly w/white trim 
flirting  among stormy thermal currents  &  
a  quantum    poem    m o r p h i n g    its  way  in-
to the evolution of   a n  ordinary sentence. Humans are trading 
mind pictures with the animal kingdom, &

starlings are forming a civil uprising ˆ ˆˆ    with  humor
among the 
                      banners  ≈    

            Th e matter of     persistent  

resistance   grows daily   in the    congressional    grip  of  
digitally  proficient     thumbs
&    stellar  quarks   of    
visionary     ravens .

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Sawnie Morris’ collection of poems Her, Infinite, won the 2015 New Issues Poetry Award (judge: Major Jackson), and was published by New Issues Press in 2016. Recent honors include the 2016 Ruth Stone Poetry Prize; inclusion in BAX: 2016, Best American Experimental Poetry, online edition (Wesleyan University Press); a feature on debut authors in the Nov/Dec 2016 issue of Poets & Writers; and a new poem in the April, 2017 issue of Poetry. Sawnie is co-founder of Amigos Bravos: Because Water Matters, a non-profit advocacy organization for the waters of New Mexico. She currently serves on the board of directors for the Oo-Oo-Nah Art & Culture Center, at Taos Pueblo.

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