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    Ordinary Stories

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    John Chudy
    This poem discusses how society has come to value exceptionalism and wealth over ordinary courage and humanity. It argues that we have created a world that only benefits the privileged and ignores those without power or resources. The COVID pandemic provided a reminder of our shared humanity and responsibility to one another. The poem calls us to value all people and their contributions, and to tell the ordinary stories that really matter in extraordinary ways.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Ordinary Stories

    Uploaded by

    John Chudy
    133 views3 pages
    This poem discusses how society has come to value exceptionalism and wealth over ordinary courage and humanity. It argues that we have created a world that only benefits the privileged and ignores those without power or resources. The COVID pandemic provided a reminder of our shared humanity and responsibility to one another. The poem calls us to value all people and their contributions, and to tell the ordinary stories that really matter in extraordinary ways.

    Original Description:

    Rachael Shenyo poem from 12/12/2020 event

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    This poem discusses how society has come to value exceptionalism and wealth over ordinary courage and humanity. It argues that we have created a world that only benefits the privileged and ignores those without power or resources. The COVID pandemic provided a reminder of our shared humanity and responsibility to one another. The poem calls us to value all people and their contributions, and to tell the ordinary stories that really matter in extraordinary ways.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    133 views3 pages

    Ordinary Stories

    Uploaded by

    John Chudy
    This poem discusses how society has come to value exceptionalism and wealth over ordinary courage and humanity. It argues that we have created a world that only benefits the privileged and ignores those without power or resources. The COVID pandemic provided a reminder of our shared humanity and responsibility to one another. The poem calls us to value all people and their contributions, and to tell the ordinary stories that really matter in extraordinary ways.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    Ordinary Stories

    A Story by Marie Anzalone

    poem written for an event

    Ordinary Stories

    Maybe we mistook
    the myth of exceptionalism
    for the reality of what being
    extraordinary, really means.
    It is not the number of Instagram
    likes and a Christmas high-wire
    circus act.
    Our ancestors who survived
    Depressions and concentration camps
    knew about the art of ordinary
    courage- tending plants in the dust
    and grace in the everyday act
    of baking bread. We lost so much
    when we stopped listening
    to the real stories. The ones that
    mattered.

    We built a world for the privileged


    and repeated the mantras that rich dads
    could afford to teach-
    work hard, and like a hot-air balloon,
    America’s convection currents
    will help you rise; the right talent
    agency will always find you. We forgot
    that there is a different America
    if you do not have the right kind of name
    or accent; of you were born
    a few miles across a manmade border;
    the wrong school district or heaven forbid,
    state or nation.

    We said we’ll fix anything that breaks,


    that is the American way, too; there is
    nothing that cannot be replaced.
    You, especially are replaceable,
    so keep your head down
    and we will pay you to sell your
    voice to your superiors. Only a few
    should afford beauty, truth, art, story.
    I look, I see how, these four years-
    we employed our doctors to wait tables,
    our scientists, to work in debt collection,
    our artists, sent to battle. We created
    a space where only cruel and mindless
    professions had a place, then asked,
    how did we become so cruel and mindless?
    We declared the creating of art,
    the writing of poetry, a waste of time,
    then asked why our children have no time
    for stories unless they fit neatly
    onto a violent movie screen.

    We turned away from children


    in camps and modern slavery, stopped listening
    to the cries of the soil beneath our feet
    in pain- so many uncaring men in heavy
    boots standing on the necks
    of people and lands they consider, inferior.
    We forgot the words to describe how
    it feels to watch humanity stripped away,
    hour by hour, line by line, stanza by stanza.
    Four years of nightmare, we struggled to define
    because we lost the language of the heart.

    At the end of the day, the human soul


    needs more than food and warmth, it
    demands justice too. Human hands need
    to feel like they contributed something
    of real worth
    not just stock-market, value.
    Human arms long to rock the dreams of
    our children, into a restful sleep
    for rightful action.

    COVID maybe was


    the earth’s poem to us; our last warning.
    Written with the blood of our loved ones
    on the open pages of a sky turning
    to ash, 6 billion people did
    what was never achieved before. They put
    their responsibility above their
    desire for comfort. The extraordinary
    was achieved. We realized, there
    are things you cannot replace.

    80 million Americans were among them.


    It was just barely enough.
    The song they lifted up, what I heard of it,
    sounds a lot like my grandmother’s
    homecoming after the Depression.
    A call to decency. A celebration of
    bread bakers and cultivators of dreams.
    A call to get our visionaries, our thinkers,
    our restorers, our lovers of land and light,
    our believers in good: all of them,
    back to the important work
    of creating a humanity we want
    our children to live in. Of telling ordinary
    stories in extraordinary ways.

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