Tilt-a-Whirl
A Poetry Sporadical of Repeating Forms
Somewhere
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did,
but people will never forget how you made them feel.”—Maya Angelou
by Kim Bridgford
Somewhere in the dark you’ll hear the crying,
For, in the end, it’s “how someone makes you feel.”
Somewhere, by his own hand, a teen is dying
From bullying, by being pushed, by trying,
Against all odds, to be an individual.
Somewhere in the dark you’ll hear the crying.
It changes everything: public displaying
Of someone else’s shame. Now vulnerable,
Somewhere, by her own hand, a teen is dying.
The bullies always say they were just playing,
Or making group dynamics manageable.
Somewhere in the dark you’ll hear the crying.
And it is not a game: to be there, sighing
On the cross; to be the target on the wall.
Somewhere, by his own hand, a teen is dying.
The world, like this, can’t last. In the end, I’m saying
It’s joy that is the answer to the soul.
Somewhere in the dark you’ll hear the crying.
Somewhere, by her own hand, a teen is dying.
Kim Bridgford is the director of the West Chester University Poetry Center and the West Chester University Poetry Conference, the largest all-poetry writing conference in the United States.
As editor of Mezzo Cammin, she founded The Mezzo Cammin Women Poets Timeline Project, which will eventually be the largest database of women poets in the world.
She is the author of five books of poetry: Undone (David Robert Books); Instead of Maps (David Robert Books); In the Extreme: Sonnets about World Records (Story Line Press), winner of the Donald Justice Prize; Take-Out: Sonnets about Fortune Cookies (David Robert Books); and Hitchcock’s Coffin: Sonnets about Classic Films (David Robert Books).
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