It’s a quiet Friday, or at least seemingly so. We wanted to take a minute this afternoon to highlight one of our valued supporters, Jendi Reiter. Jendi recently won the Anderbo Poetry Prize for her work “Bullies in Love,” and she was generous enough to donate a portion of her winnings to Truth Wins Out. Below is the text of that poem and video of her reading it.
Bullies In Love
Wouldn’t it be nice to believe all hate is desire,
the bullet that wings the bird
wanting to be a bird?
Believe, if little dead boys can
hold their dear opinions in the ground,
that the fist is only a heart
stunned by too much muscle?
Because then you would still be visible,
chosen as carefully for destruction
as the cities of the plain
or the shy girl in a vampire novel,
the girl who is all elbows and sorrow
and stands outside at weddings.
The truth is, most hatred is different from really rough sex,
neither masked for the sizzle of mystery
nor screaming the name of the defeated, its own.
Not thinking is its flavor.
Deafness, its spice.
But believe, because you are not yet twenty-one
and drowning, not yet lying down at seventeen
beneath the homecoming train, not yet a choking thirteen
hung from your mother’s garage ceiling,
because you are still at home on prom night
watching the Discovery Channel, you will be convinced
that the zebras, by now, must be aware of the cameras
and that the one who tumbles beneath the lion’s
rank delicious weight is choosing
something like the mating that escaped you.
For more info on Jendi, visit her website.
