Golden Shovel Poem and Collage of the Everyman, by Alise Versella

Dear Readers,

We had two beautiful poems to share with you on Monday but due to some technical difficulties, we're publishing them today!

There's not much to say about poet Alise Versella, whose work engages all five of your senses, that you won't feel for yourself in the very first line. 

As always, thank you for reading! 

The Derailleur Press Team

GOLDEN SHOVEL POEM: GLAMOROUS GABRIEL AS THE SUIT OF CUPS

“holy as i will be, possessed as i am.” —Claire Schwartz, from “Behind the Mechitza”

Gabriel. Boy child in an indigo dress, fluid as a fish and just as holy 
Behold, the family as rough sea in pursuit of empathy. When the world seems unclean, I
Wash the laundry. Wring it free from mud like wry wrists that will 
Inherit the bruise. Lapis-lazuli-blue and fragile as pearls be 
The same ivory reflection that possessed 
Narcissus from the lake’s surface—he just wanted another man to love him as
Autumn leaves love, the sun setting in the West, I  
Protest to dreams of drowned Abraham. Gabriel, let love converge with the flood and resuscitate 
you in the a.m.

COLLAGE OF THE EVERYMAN 

Every city in America is a meatpacking district, can’t you smell the blood?
It runs through each street, countless avenues, haunts us like gunned-down schoolkids
In every hallway and corridor in the schoolrooms of America 
The stench stuck in the carpets of abandoned, burnt-out ruins of old New York
In a time where poetry graffitied the trains that rattled in the subways of our pneumonia lungs
The bones of our carcasses echoing in the metal cans lit up like they lit up with heroin needles
To keep what was left of them warm 
The blood seeps into Suburbia, taints the meat at Sunday Supper 
We are Wojnarowicz’s “gagging cow disappearing into the Hudson River”
We are the buffalo pushed off the edge of America 
When her colonizers took hold of the weapon and put the knife to our throats
America wants her breath to hurt in her oppressor’s lungs 
So she keeps the pressure on the necks of the ones in charge 
So their snakelike mouths cannot swallow her dormouse dreams 
The art she makes isn’t pretty. If you wanted sellable, go get a mass-produced beach scene at 
Home Goods, they feed you the illusion of safety 
Our art reflects the disturbing. The greasy underbelly, the deep-fried flesh off our backs 
But we keep laboring for their scraps 
They censor us. Say art is only for those rich enough to afford to have their sick minds quieted
Your morals make us riotous, civil unrest.  
You ostracize the most lost lamb of the flock 
Like Heaven’s fallen angel you cast us out 
But we revolt. Reflect the resisting in our art. 
It says we are here. We’re here as in fuck off.

Alise Versella is a Pushcart-nominated contributing writer for Rebelle Society whose work has also been published in Academy of the Heart and Mind, Circle Show, COG Magazine, The Courtship of Winds, Crack the Spine, El Portal, Elephant Journal, Enclave, Entropy, Evening Street Review, Grub Street, Neologism Poetry Journal, The Opiate, Penumbra Literary and Art Journal, Poydras Review, Press Pause Press, Soundings East, Ultraviolet Tribe, Umbrella Factory Magazine, What Rough Beast, Steam Ticket, Visitant, and Wrath-Bearing Tree, among others. She has recently published a poetry collection When Wolves Become Birds (Golden Dragonfly Press) and was nominated for Sundress Pub’s 2021 Best of the Net award. Versella has worked with author Francesca Lia Block and Women’s Spiritual Poetry, whose latest anthology, Goddess: When She Rules, raised money for the Malala Fund. Kirkus has called her “…[A] boundlessly energetic and promising technician [who] crafts a unique blend of the symbolist and the confessional; a talented, promising newcomer.” She performs at local coffeehouses in Southern New Jersey and has taught poetry workshops at local libraries and schools