Donations are requested for the reinstatement of the Richard Wright Library in Hinds County, MS, shut down for lack of funds and several times vandalized from 2020 onwards – a glass case with Richard Wright artifacts having been destroyed. If you want to make a donation however small, even the price of one pencil or ball pen, please write to imaginesisyphushappy26@gmail.com and you will be placed on a list of donors to be contacted once we have a support group and a fundraising link. If you cannot donate but have an idea about book-saving, please share.
WHERE DOES UNGRIEVED GRIEF GO?
where does ungrieved grief
go?
centuries of ungrieved grief
turning
loved ones lost
and stolen homes
into walking dead …
where does ungrieved grief
go?
how does one
hang up
unshed tears
to dry?
where does ungrieved grief
go?
does it curl up
obediently
when the juicy bone
of denial and distraction
is dangled
to cloud the eye?
does it lower its head
at noon
and go to bed?
where does ungrieved grief
go?
does it make its way
away from the underground
where our railroads
and so many unburied bodies
still are?
does it sew itself
blinders
with its own feathers and tar?
where does ungrieved grief go?
what climate change of the heart
can melt the snow
to reveal such an ancient scar?
and if we were not to look away
would our grief burst
into flower?
(c) Julia Wright July 4, 2026. All Rights Reserved.
WHAT DO WE DO WITH OUR BATTLES WON?
To the Hind Rajab Foundation and the Center For Constitutional Rights but also to Panthers For Palestine and Uniting For Peace, to the Youth for Mumia who attended the World Congress Against the Death Penalty that just ended in Paris and to all those who from the grassroots up made sure Ben Gvir would not travel to New York…for reasons of “security and protest plans” …
we turned Ben Gvir
away
for a second time
so
what do we do
with our battles won?
do we treat them
like highfalutin’ diplomas
frame them
hang them
on the wall
of a privately practiced
Revolution?
do we gulp
them down
only to look around
for another quick fix
for another fast food binge
at the drive thru
of MacAbolition?
what do we do
with our battles won?
do we magpie
them away
from the community
who fought so hard
to make them
exist
in the first place?
do we dilute them
into
oblivion’s luxury?
do we consign them
to a date of expiry ?
or
do we pause
long enough
to embrace them tight
to give them time of day
and History
and
study them
and recognize the sacrifice
of all those,
so many unnamed,
who gave their tears and blood
and lifetime
and Love
to bring them about?
(c) Julia Wright July 7, 2026. All Rights Reserved to the Steering Committee of the Global Sumud Flotilla, to Susan Abulhawa’s playgroundsforpalestine.org and to what remains of the family of the poet and educator assassinated by the IOF, Refaat Alareer
To all those who refuse to say : Books are dead, Long live the King of the Post Literate Age
Here in the United States, we are being told over and over again that we have reached the end of the reading age, that we are in a post literate world (remember we are already supposed to be in a post-truth and in a post racial world), that a new a-literate paradigm is afloat. The implication being that it is but a rite of passage and it may be for “the good.”
The good of whom and what?
AI?
The Palantir- driven manipulations of the mind?
The age of ChatGPT and robots?
The elite capture of knowledge?
We must resist with every fibre of our book-fed beings.
I begin today the writing of some poems that I hope will contribute to prevent the bookicide hanging over our minds and our paper.
And, to begin with, I encourage you to experience the joy of paper book annotation past and present!
No bookicide here.
BURNED BIRD BLUES
not sling shot
by some entitled child
not hunted down
by some collector
of rare species
not sickened
by some new disease
not given the time
to hide
in order to die
out of the broiling blue
a burned bird
fell from the sky
(c) Julia Wright July 11, 2026. All Rights Reserved. For my future collection called “Ecology of Love”,
AN ODE TO BOOK MARGINS
book margins –
you are curated alleys
of yellowing white
as if Autumn has long let the page know
it may not be perennial
you are the sovereign paper land
around the text
i read back then
with the freedom of delight
you are the garden
i got to plant
with the selected seeds
of my handwritten notes
you who decades later
do not lie fallow
and
yield a harvest
of my past thoughts
you who bear witness
to my capoeira
with a beloved author’s ideas
you who
get me
to dance every time
i read
you whose penciled presence waits
between the beautiful gates
of cover art
you who smell
of musty loyal
discreet patience
you who won’t go
anywhere
so i will always know
where to follow
in the soil
of my ancestors’ footsteps
you who
bear witness to the mentorship
of those who have long become
the compost
that grow the trees
that gave us the paper
and you –
o written words left behind
in a book’s margins
words scribbled
so hastily sometimes
they must be deciphered –
you are a voice
a journal
an intravenous feed
humbly keeping the book
and the strong spirit who wrote it
from being
marginalized
from going
irreparably agonal
(c) Julia Wright July 15, 2026. All Rights Reserved to donations for the reinstatement of the Richard Wright Library in Hinds County, MS, shut down for lack of funds and several times vandalized from 2020 onwards – a glass case with Richard Wright artifacts having been destroyed. If you want to make a donation however small, even the price of one pencil or ball pen, please write to imaginesisyphushappy26@gmail.com and you will be placed on a list of donors to be contacted once we have a support group and a fundraising link. If you cannot donate but have an idea about book-saving, please share.
