Cheryl Grady Mercier studies in Rowan University's Graduate Creative Writing program and is finishing a memoir/biography of an 89-year-old woman. Mercier has won recognition for non-fiction and poetry from the National Writers Association and the Atlanta Review. Drexel Online Journal published her fiction and The Philadelphia Inquirer has published her essays.
Bring Poetry to Our Plebian Pots
Bring Poetry to Our Plebian Pots
Poetry is … bloody work…Poets need to advocate for poetry.
—Edward Hirsch on NPR’s“Radio Times,”
November 2005
A modest proposal, guerilla culture
like London Underground or New York
subway placards that prove transportation
venues value verse. Schools oft post notices
in bathroom stalls where nature orders pause
and leaves minds empty, open to discovery,
all souls humbled on that throne.
An idea for a strong ego, a poet
laureate immune to jest and jibe, might
persuade poetry publications, starved
for readers to submit poems—a
radical national campaign to post
poetry above urinals, in stalls
everywhere
Literature could be accessible
to bodies relieved and ready for
rhyme and meter, sonnet and sestina
free verse, or villanelle.
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