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    The New Verse News presents politically progressive poetry on current events and topical issues.

    Thursday, February 2, 2017

    BUILDING WALLS

    by Megan Merchant




    I have seen the most beautiful walls painted by children,
    walls with crowds of hands shaped into doves and flowers
    tall. I have seen the most beautiful walls sledged by exhausted
    fathers who wear the stucco-dust home and lull their babies
    into sleep with tales about how they gutted that great beast.
    I have seen the most beautiful walls dressed for carnival, lined
    with stars, and helmets in remembrance of our fallen. I have seen
    the most beautiful walls drenched with ivy, an accord with nature,
    water dripping into buckets down brick. I have heard the word
    wall in a thousand clumsy ways, the buzz saw and hammer
    being cleaned in the toolbox of his mouth, the easy-dirt of his words,
    where we tunnel. I have seen the way men resurrect walls to keep
    the light out, too afraid to meet the eyes of a woman directly. Because
    he knows she has learned to see around the symbol, that it is not a greater
    means of division, or a blockade, but a chance to climb, to see people
    holding hands from a different perspective, high enough that their
    bodies blur into one.


    Megan Merchant is mostly forthcoming. She is the author of two full-length poetry collections: Gravel Ghosts (Glass Lyre Press, 2016 Book of the Year), The Dark’s Humming (2015 Lyrebird Prize, Glass Lyre Press, forthcoming 2017), four chapbooks, and a children’s book with Philomel Books.

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