Join The Saturday Celebration with Joanne Durham in 1 Hour.

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Solutions
What we need is an alchemist, a woman
schooled to stir a beaker of woundworts
and calomel, steady it to steam, scatter
light off glass. She doesn’t need
to turn lead to gold, just melt stone
hearts down to something malleable, clay
or mud would do, pour some potion
in our ears to let us hear the hollow breath
of children who are eating dust, yes,
turn gold to bread, and guide our eyes
to see theirs in our own stained mirrors.
“Solutions” appeared in Chasing Justice, copyright © Joanne Durham 2026, and is used with permission of Shanti Arts Publishing [www.shantiarts.com]. (First published in NC Literary Review Online 2023, James Applewhite semi-finalist)
After Cataract Surgery
I saw colors waning and braiding
into each other, a blur of everything
I thought I knew.
My eyes adjusted, but not the world
I live in−bombs landing
between rows of olive trees,
mountain towns crumbling
from something so natural as rain,
water rationed to a line
that snakes around the block
at the Ingles Market in Hendersonville.
I want red that isn’t fire or blood.
Bring back the scarlet
leaves of the Franklin tree,
now extinct in the wild,
protect the bald ibis,
ancient symbol
of fertility and virtue.
Sun, please swear to wait
your turn to burn out,
take your full five billion years,
give us all the time we need
to fix our severed sight.
“After Cataract Surgery” appeared in Chasing Justice, copyright © Joanne Durham 2026, and is used with permission of Shanti Arts Publishing [www.shantiarts.com]. (First published in Cold Mountain Review, 2026)
Don’t Give Children Any Gifts Tied to Reading
	in response to Florida’s HB1467, K-12 Education
Go then, pack away Honey I Love, unfit title
for eight-year-olds. Hide Can I Touch Your Hair?
braided with so much empathy it must be banned. Destroy
A Caribbean Dozen, the book Robert finds first thing
each morning, which sometimes gets him through the day
without stabbing a classmate with his pencil. “I practiced
the poem from Haiti,” he tells me. Remove Good Books,
Good Times (the editor was gay). Search Daryl before
he goes home, be sure there’s no Pocketful of Poems
he’s hidden to read with a flashlight under his covers. Snatch
Out of Wonder out of Eddie’s hands as he and Dora share
the rocking chair, puzzling over “chasing justice”
and “smile like moon.” She teaches him the hard words,
he shows her the funny part about alphabet soup−
choosing their favorite books, they give each other gifts
they must unlearn to give.
“Don’t Give Children Any Gifts Tied to Reading” appeared in Chasing Justice, copyright © Joanne Durham 2026, and is used with permission of Shanti Arts Publishing [www.shantiarts.com]. (First published in Writers Resist 2023)