Poetry by Julene Tripp Weaver

     Taber Andrew Bain CC




Trail of Dust
             —Brian Eno Inspired

We’ve been here before: Anita Bryant
We live in this moment with QAnon
We’ve survived Reagan, Bush, the first Trump
years, the Holocaust, racial profiling, hate crimes

We’re stronger smarter wiser
There are more of us 

Little ones grown learn our age wars,
labeled Boomer, Xennial, Millennial, Gen Z
Neophytes and Embryos on a dying
planet: they want, no, they need, change

Music our ally, Plants our ally
Mushrooms our ally, Justice our ally

People and generations dead: Lost,
Greatest, Silent. Alphas continue to be born
A rise in temperature: A scourge: A purge:
A new dawn, beyond Aquarius 

Intergalactic words end in a trail of dust
melodic songs, Ghosts in a choir

a grand immigration, displaced, we will be
refusing to see ourselves in internment camps,
refugee tents, or the prisons they build for us
we hold together             we fall apart

Nothing easy in this art gallery
only we create

​



No Means No

Your aggravated assault—might it be misinterpreted
as love—such aggression spurned, this “I must have you 
now” inherent weakness elicits such misunderstanding.

Mr. Turner, coward, you put a mickey in her drink 
to have and to hold under a dumpster, dirt invading 
her vagina. Such a wide mouth of need that will never

be satisfied across the sexes—but there is something 
beyond this affront, beyond the race wars white boys
persist to start—you make us pessimists.

Your turn-of-cheek, when I or any woman says,
No—you can’t have me—but you insist. No means
No, even if it bends like a willow in your wind. 

It is a gift, this sweet underside, a woman’s flesh, 
a place babies come from and healing—like salicylic 
acid that lines willow branches, a headache cure, 

our grandmothers chewed the soft twigs—but a man 
isolated the acid, separated and stripped the inner bark
to take what he needed. You’ve made it with rape 

bonus points, such an fine upstanding future, 
star swimmer, judge in your favor, but worry, 
worry hard, till you heart turns to sincere apology.

​

​

Julene Tripp Weaver is the author of four poetry collections: Slow Now With Clear Skies, truth be bold: Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS (a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards, winner of the Bisexual Book Award and four Human Relations Indie Book Awards), No Father Can Save Her, and a chapbook Case Walking: An AIDS Case Manager Wails Her Blues. Widely published and anthologized, she was a Jack Straw Writing Fellow (2022-2023). Find her at www.julenetrippweaver.com.

---