A Collection of Poetry from Torli Bush
Appalachian Poet Torli Bush shares three poems and a call to action
By Torli Bush & Art Grove Staff | 10/31/24
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For this month's issue of Art Grove Newsletter, we proudly present a collection of three poems written by West Virginia poet Torli Bush.
Torli Bush is from Webster Springs, WV. They hold a Bachelor's of Science in Mechanical Engineering from West Virginia University and a MFA in Creative Writing from West Virginia Wesleyan College. Torli is currently a poetry editor for Heartwood Literary Magazine and their work has appeared in K'in Literary Journal, Appalachian Lit, Callaloo, In the Shadow of the Mic: Three Decades of Slam Poetry in Pittsburgh, and Anthology of Appalachian Writers - Ann Pancake Volume XVI. A significant portion of their first collection Requiem for A Redbird, originally entitled American Psalms, was also named as a finalist in the 2023 Center for African American Poetry and Poetics Book Prize from the University of Pittsburgh.
Those interested in reading more of Torli's poems can do so by picking up a copy of Requiem for a Redbird, Torli's first published collection.
In light of recent events in their home region, Torli has asked that we make a donation to the MANNA Foodbank in western North Carolina, which is helping our neighbors in the region recover from the damage of Hurricane Helene. We gladly made a donation to the cause, and we encourage all of you to do the same.
You can make a donation to the MANNA Foodbank here.
With you Langston
I, too, sing America.
I am at the table
when company comes.
They have seen how
beautiful we are;
their shame is now
a manifest hatred.
In their ill-manners,
Baldwin's fire leaps
from my tongue:
we have come this far,
but still the phantasmal limbs
of the slave catchers snatch
our brothers and sisters
from the table
through
the
floorboards.
Cacophony of muted heartbeats,
clockwork insanity.
This, too, is America.
Their Program is a Killing Machine
GOP Speaker of the House Mike Johnson will not call a special session for supplemental FEMA funds for Hurricane Helene
We sing the river
know when it comes too high,
washes the valley out
never to look for a suit,
but the responders:
nurses, pilots, guardsmen,
the charities of the community.
We've been here before:
Richwood, Hindman.
Everything swallowed up
and we still here,
sure as these mountains.
There will be a tune mourning our dead;
a second made for the hands of day,
parsing the current and clay,
to give meals, healthcare, shelter.
They will be passed on
in the play of a fiddle
a hundred years from now,
as that suit lies crisp & clean
in a dead man's box.
For the people of Gaza
Sing a hymn of blossoms,
a vigil in the midst of
cloudbursts of embers.
The Eagle breathes smoke
in a mother’s lungs,
suffocates her, the life within her,
starves the second child
still latched to her.
The Lion cries for more,
roars a civilization to rubble;
roars the snake is not dead;
roars the men are the snake,
the women are the snake,
the children are the snake,
the land is the snake,
and the Eagle exhales
column upon
column upon
column upon
column of smoke.
The world can only watch
their souls flower loose
into unfathomable sparrows,
an uncountable ransom of farthings
flocking towards the Simurgh.
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