Rebecca Ruth Gould | Small Town Tyranny | Poets Resist

Rebecca Ruth Gould is the author of the poetry collection Cityscapes (Alien Buddha Press, forthcoming in 2019), Writers & Rebels (Yale University Pres), and translator of After Tomorrow the Days Disappear: Ghazals and Other Poems of Hasan Sijzi of Delhi (Northwestern University Press, 2016) and The Death of Bagrat Zakharych and other Stories by Vazha-Pshavela (Paper & Ink, 2019). A Pushcart Prize nominee, she was a finalist for the Luminaire Award for Best Poetry (2017) and for Lunch Ticket’s Gabo Prize (2017).

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Also by Rebecca Ruth Gould: Graffitied City Five Poems/a> Apartheid

Poets Resist
Edited by Michael Carter
August 8, 2019

Rebecca Ruth Gould

Small Town Tyranny

When they bug our rooms & surveil our emails, my love for you opens like a Venus fly trap. My lips grasp your kiss before it vanishes in polluted air. Even when the state holds us in its grip, the tenderness of your fingertips lingers on my breast. I fear what will happen when you cross the threshold, seeking refuge in my body. Will the sentries of sovereignty unearth the shards of our intimacy scavenged from our paper scraps — I told you to burn them — Will banishment be our punishment? Will the bureaucrats use our love to proclaim the victory of their provincial tyrannies, just as they hang dead bodies in the public square: to terrify lovers everywhere?