These three poems by KJ Hannah Greenberg implore words impact on creating social realities…
by: KJ Hannah Greenberg
Sadhana
Any methodical discipline to attain desired knowledge
Becomes, itself, a sort of goal. Regard how goatherds,
Also, cowpokes, tend to round up their wee resources.
Sometimes, alternatively, such persons try guarding
Strong postulants, else labor with needless kerfuffles
Related to moving disparate beliefs to higher ground.
Even bullocks recognize that no quantity of sucking
Down spilanthes can enliven peak sources of bruised
Spiritualism. Lambs gonna frolic no matter the costs!
Synecdoche
Parts made to represent the whole most often come of
Careless harping on the way in which certain bobbles
Do justice to entire populations. Truthfully, goings-on
Among statuses frequently require integrity’s essence.
“Kasamas” aren’t merely enjambed acquaintances. More
Readily, such associations bring elements of tulisans and
Barangays. After all, when haciendas enslave feet, there
Are not just limbs suffering rapes, beatings, also murders.
Furthermore, their burial places feature no fine stelas;
Those victims are dirt, tree food, root nourishment for
Future generations (even so, children fail to thrive into
Adulthood after being regarded as measly appendages.)
Bloviating
Ideas englobed by pandering often represent little
Substance; they’re mostly nonsense-filled, akin to
Hot air, but sans meritorious ballooning. Basically,
Linguistic dishabille is nothing but old balderdash.
So, conversational lucanas ordinarily struggle for
Rhetorical provenance. Commonplace references
Tend to employ malaprops and apply eggcorns if
Dispelling all manner of truth (people are stupid.)
The best antidote to paraprosdokians’ widespread
Kin remains a working knowledge of language. If
Fools advise polyphonic riots, balete trees cannot
Tender shelter to nipa dwellers or encomenderos.
KJ Hannah Greenberg has been playing with words for an awfully long time. Initially a rhetoric professor and a National Endowment for the Humanities Scholar, she shed her academic laurels to romp around with a prickle of imaginary hedgehogs. Thereafter, she’s been nominated once for The Best of the Net in poetry, three times for the Pushcart Prize in Literature for poetry, once for the Pushcart Prize in Literature for fiction, once for the Million Writers Award for fiction, and once for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay.
