"We May No Longer Consider the End" by Ruth Ellen Kocher

[View this email on a browser]( [Forward to a friend]( [facebook-icon]( [tumblr-icon]( [twitter-icon]( October 19, 2018 [We May No Longer Consider the End]( [Ruth Ellen Kocher]( The time of birds died sometime between When Robert Kennedy, Jr. disappeared and the Berlin Wall came down. Hope was pro forma then. We’d begun to talk about shelf-life. Parents Thought they’d gotten somewhere. I can’t tell you What to make of this now without also saying that when I was 19 and read in a poem that the pure products of America go crazy I felt betrayed. My father told me not to whistle because I Was a girl. He gave me my first knife and said to keep it in my right Hand and to keep my right hand in my right pocket when I walked at night. He showed me the proper kind of fist and the sweet spot on the jaw To leverage my shorter height and upper-cut someone down. There were probably birds on the long walk home but I don’t Remember them because pastoral is not meant for someone With a fist in each pocket waiting for a reason. [Like this on Facebook]( [Share via Twitter]( Copyright © 2018 Ruth Ellen Kocher. Used with permission of the author. [Ruth Ellen Kocher reads "We May No Longer Consider the End."]( About This Poem “I’m working on a prose book called Notes on Whiteness that recalls my experiences growing up as a black girl in a working-class white family. I’ve been trying to articulate how my white father understood my anger and helped me to weaponize it as a way to survive a world he knew was cruel to me. He knew what I’d be up against. He wanted to raise ‘a young lady’ but also wanted to make sure I could fight and win.” —Ruth Ellen Kocher [Ruth Ellen Kocher]( Ruth Ellen Kocher is the author of Third Voice (Tupelo Press, 2016). She is a professor of English and divisional dean for Arts and Humanities at the University of Colorado–Boulder. She lives in Erie, Colorado. [more-at-poets]( [Third Voice]( Poetry by Kocher [Third Voice]( (Tupelo Press, 2016) "Anarcha Will Speak and It Will Be So" by Dominique Christina [read-more]( "Children Listen" by Roger Reeves [read-more]( "Brown Girl Has Walked Into the Wild, Palms Up" by Barbara Jane Reyes [read-more]( October Guest Editor: Ross Gay Thanks to Ross Gay, author of Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015), who curated Poem-a-Day this month. Read more about [Gay](and our [guest editors for the year.]( [make a one-time donation]( [make a monthly donation]( [Advertisement]( [Small-Blue-RGB-poets.org-Logo]( Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit [Poets.org](. You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click [here](. © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038