DAY 12: MEGAN KAMINSKI, RIOT LOVE POEM

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Riot Love Poem

For Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

A riot    an order    a call in the night to say I love

you and you and you and most especially

the street and open space and our bodies

unbound by restraint and moneyed constriction

and in dreams last night you spoke of fire

of labor and building and soft nests     no armor-clad

SUVs on urban boulevards not oil money not Stoleshnikov Lane    

This morning I exhale across continents breath joined

with yours and ours and wanting more than boundaries

street lamps awakened    petals unfurling    hands opening

burn treasury burn prison burn credit burn churches

burn drones burn austerity burn banks burn office buildings

sing certainty and mass gatherings    totalities

I opened to I into we   

Now we are in Moscow now Perm now Mordovia

Now we are in Paris now Wall Street now Guantanamo

Now Atchison now Waco now Oakland

Now the avenue the bakery the café

Text springing from fingers

Language from mouths