Emmet VR Abrams is a 16 year old Los Angeles born artist and writer. They have been featured in the statewide California Poets in the Schools anthology and garnered special recognition in Stone Soup Magazine. Emmet attends Crossroads School and actively participates in many of their school’s theatre, film, and art programs. Emmet is also a devoted member of Crossroad School’s GSA club, and is openly bisexual and non-binary. Their hobbies include playing the ukulele, singing, and overanalyzing children’s cartoons.
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*****
Have They Run Out of Old White Men Yet?
Have they run out of old white men yet?
If they haven’t, we’ve reason to fret.
Long ago, there was just “Confederates.”
(Long ago, people died at their bayonets)
But then the KKK came our way,
Making Confederates strictly passé.
Civil rights was the song that we sung,
Though they tried everything to stop our tongues.
Then when they all got in the loop
They disintegrated into manageable groups.
All the far right Republicans, misogynists, and homophobes
The popularity of their beliefs began to shrink to microbes
So once we thought we were finished, then
A new type of them arrived: average citizen.
Then respect was a fraction of meager
For those who were not as eager
To mock minorities with slights and names,
And indulge in outdated, bigoted games.
Now, as each brand-new micro-aggression appears,
It brings tension, increasing our fears:
Could a time we extolled as a find
Be revealed as decades behind?
So we sometimes do miss, I confess,
Days of victory in equality (with no stress)
When we never were faced with the threat
Of the bigoted side we hadn’t met.
Is there some joke that we don’t get?
Have they run out of old white men yet?
***
The Law Is Dead
The law is dead
Organs failed the public aorta
Causation with no affection
No infection, my dears, affectations
Once said to sedate a sleeping crowd
Those lies now turn the anarchists loud
Now the law lies in bed with a maiden Ophelia
Rotting with an unkempt greenhouse
Daises for loser virgins
Rosemary that I forgot
Fennels for playing a cheap trick
Rue for weeping at 5 am with a bottle of vodka
And violets for a broken commitment
Under them the slain families lie
I am your Horatio
Your Benvolio, your final survivor
I stand over Romeos and Juliets
Depressed Hamlets, the reeling Tempest that swept them all to dust
All those Midsummers gone too soon
The law is dead! Ring the church bells!
Give it a televised funeral
Market its corpse
And consume whats left
Throw rice, I’m not certain the custom
But with certainty I can say
The law is dead
The law is dead
THE LAW IS DEAD!
Yes, the law is dead, its sunken crown
The law is dead and fallen down
And so with weathered, bloody hand
In law’s place we here stand.
***
One Door Closes Another
It is odd to be faced
with a finite amount of time,
a looming date.
It throws me back,
Oh, my lovely, it tosses me,
reminds me of Shakespearean
tragedy and doves
against June’s sky.
You both have such smiles,
Oh, my lovely, it tosses me.
I’m a toy boat
in the middle of the Atlantic.
The scary city
that you’d go to,
the sea foam lady
who towers over a ripe
Red Delicious, but bittersweet,
like baker’s chocolate,
a taste reminding me of that New Years Eve
we spent in our virtual Greece.
Now, I’ll dream of the whirring of engines,
a thundering rocket, skyward
like Benny’s Vega.
Why did I have to go and like you?
Why did you have to love me so hard?
You are the siren leaving Lesbos.
I, Sappho,
femme tears on butchered skin.
Why did you have to love me so hard?
(Author photos by Alexis Rhone Fancher)