BONUS: After the show, take your Motionpoems program over to the MSP International Film Festival XYZ Music Video Party + Gallery Show for FREE admission! This is the MSPIFF's biggest party of the year, and admission is usually $15 at the door. We'll see you at Aria!Â
MORE ABOUT MOTIONPOEMS: DEAR Mr. PRESIDENT:Â
Led by Executive Producer Claire McGirr, this year Motionpoems has decided to tackle issues that affect everyone.
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Pairing filmmakers & poets to make creative content, Season 8 features 12 short films that tackle racism, LGBTQIA+ rights, immigration, women's rights, gun control, educational & social welfare, judicial system reform, climate change, and news/media/social platforms.
Our poets include Tiana Clark, Natalie Diaz, Eve L. Ewing, Peter LaBerge, Robin Coste Lewis, Susannah Nevison, Danez Smith, Maggie Smith, Lee Ann Roripaugh, and Nomi Stone.
Their poems were adapted to film by directors Daniel Daly, Kate Dolan, Mohammed Hammad, Anais LaRocca, Savanah Leaf, Monty Marsh, Jane Morledge, Ty Richardson, Ryan Simon, Tom Speers, Jovan Todorovic and Tash Tung.
If there are fewer stars now / than when I was a child, / I can't say / which are missing, / who was the last to see them. / is it not a crime / unless we call it a crime? / It is difficult to document a disappearance, / a boat full of stars / capsized. / Stars lying in the sand / face-down, / wearing small shoes. / Add that to the report: / some of the stars washes up / in small shoes.
i fed your body to the fish / traded it at lunch for milk / i know where they buried you / cause it's my mouth. / they tell me bootstraps / & i spit up a little leather / they tell me Christ / but you don't have black friends / during the anthem / i hum Niggas in Paris / i cha cha slide over the flag / C-walk on occasion / i put a spell on you / it called for 3/4s of my blood / apple pie, red / bones & a full moon / but instead i did it / in the daylight, wanted you / to see me ending you / stupid stupid me / i know better than to fuck / with a recipe...
When I think of Trayvon Martin, I think of Emmett Till, / when I think of Emmett Till, I think of young black men in the South, / then I think of young, white men in the South. / I think of my husband, who is white, born and raised in Franklin, TN. / I think of how when he tries to hold my hand, / sometimes I pull away and not because I don't love him, / but because I'm conscience, I think of other people, / other people who are born in the South, / I think about the nooses that hung on our back porch when I was little: / one for me and one for my mom...Â
 after Jean Rhys & Charlotte Brontë / I was born in the attic/ because Mother claimed / brown the more honest name / for beige. They hit her - / the doctor, the priest, her / mother. She sat alone / all day, spitting her teeth / out like pomegranate. / There is this large putrid jar / beneath our bed. I came / after she climber out / too often with the yard man / to lay cane. Now our days / will be out of doors, instead / of inside them; our future will lie / with petals, caterpillars, well-dressed / moss, hypnotic snails, clapping...
i come from the fire city / fire came and licked up our houses, lapped them up like they were nothing / drank them like the last dribbling water from a concrete fountain / the spigot is too hot to touch with your lips be careful / fire kissed us and laughed / and even now the rust climbs the walls, red ivy / iron fire and the brick blossoms florid / red like stolen lipstick ground down...
In the beginning, we were one blood. / Then the body, stem of thorns, grew / its disagreement from the inside / out. Like all biblical stories, it begins / with a simple thorn, a natural secret / the body kept from itself. I open / the sealed envelope: everything in the sky / folder, gathered into one body. Shoulders, / the tightness of my mouth. Wounded / bird. Lightning, fluttering between two boys / who want to be in a basement in a town / they dreamt up. Lightning in cities and towns / I've never been to, never heard of. I am / positive. I am not. I make a moon with sugar...
Life is short, though I keep this from my children. / Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine / in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways, / a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways / I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least / fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative / estimate, though I keep this from my children. / For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird...
Goldfish-shaped balloons tense /Â Â Â Â Â Â at coming fire, the sensor / reels and leaves stutter out the window /Â Â Â Â Â Â of the cell where the translator / peels oranges for the fallen leader. /Â Â Â Â Â Â The city dims. God / of infinite sets, god of the craters not /Â Â Â Â Â Â visible to the naked / eye: nothing prepared me for this. /Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â A man crosses the city, / traveling with his sister...
Consider the cell not as you see it / but as it comes to be: a world / unto itself, the garden, uncharted / and rife with wildness, beasts unnamed, / One man to one small room - you / grant him dominion so that he might / render the room expansive and rich, / his kingdom, stretch his mind / indefinitely. But since this is the beginning / of the world, it's up to you / to define the edges, contour / the known, to introduce the common / language: show him how this world / is nothing more than God's hand / grenade spinning through the air...
Kearney, Nebraska Crane Trust / I had a few days left of my stay at the crane sanctuary / in Kearney, Nebraska, when my brother called. It was 3:24 a.m. / It's me, he said, It's your brother. He had taken apart / another Polaroid camera and needed me to explain how / to put it back together. His voice was a snare drum, knocking / and quick. He was crying. I didn't want to wake the other visitors, / and I knew he'd keep calling, hour after hour, day after day, / lifetime after miserable lifetime, until I answered....
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Native Americans make up less than / one percent of the population of America. / 0.8 percent of 100 percent. // O, mine efficient country. // I do not remember the days / before America—I do not remember the days / when we were all here. // Police kill Native Americans more / than any other race. Race is a funny word. / Race implies someone will win,
They are roving / the wild boars / on the move across farmlands / and main streets / trampling gardens / rooting through rubble / snuggling trash / looting noodle stands / nuzzling / the rotten stores of grocery markets / feral and mean and strong / left on their own to thrive / in the no go zone / plumped up / on radioactive plants and vermin / muscle and bone and fat / live/ with the electric current of cesium 137 / disco-glittering their veins...
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