We are all Kurds of Turkey and Iraq

we are all citizens of Baghdad

we are all U.S. soldiers in robot skins,

with our rights denied

with bombs falling on our heads

tossed in a salad of aggression

not on our menus.

Revolt, revolt

lettuces, cucumbers, tomatoes of the world!

We will not serve

we will become our own cooks,

as Lenin said,

stirring, arranging the state

in bowls of clay, of faience, of melamine,

each to our taste of tongue and eye and mind,

fine and saucy,

no more smothered by

another’s taste for oil.

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Katharine Beeman is a co-coordinating committee member for Toronto’s Second International Festival of Poetry of Resistance, 16-20 September, 2010,  Montrealer Katharine Beeman’s poems appear in two books, a chapbook, over 8 anthologies, at festivals and readings.