I never learned to bake bread,
never have roasted a turkey
or gotten pregnant, birthed a baby.
I know how to say no to some things.
I never learned to put up a wall, though,
in my heart when seeing others tear gassed,
or shot, or hung, or shot again.
I wake up in the night wondering what
I can do. Also, when the tear gas
will come my way, trigger my asthma.
I have learned to go to the museum.
Look for the strange. Redon’s eye
hanging over a seascape.
Death transformed into beauty.
Small doses of fear. Mossa’s self-portrait
with a scorpion and a snake.
My heart repairs, for today.
I, too, will wear a scorpion.
And a half smile.
Never
Maud Lavin
Maud Lavin’s most recent books are the eco-novel Mermaids and Lazy Activists: A Lake Michigan Tale (From Beyond Press) and the poetry collection Swim Lessons (Tulipwood). She is also the author of Cut with the Kitchen Knife: The Weimar Photomontages of Hannah Höch (Yale UP), named a New York Times Notable Book; Clean New World (MIT); Push Comes to Shove (MIT); and Silences, Ohio (Cowboy Jamboree); and the editor of three anthologies. Her writing has appeared in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German, Dutch, Finnish, and Spanish as well as English. A professor emerita at SAIC, she has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and other grants--and residencies at Ragdale and the National University of Singapore.