Vox Populi
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Molly Fisk: Early
and no one parked on the streets
yet, a couple of crows strut the sidewalk
foraging: cigarette butts and bottle tops,
tail end of someone’s breakfast burrito.
Small towns at daybreak are so nostalgic:
the only thing missing’s a train whistle.
Good morning, America. Mercenaries
in Portland last night teargassed a wall
of mothers. How long will we remember?
And the way the gas interrupts menstruation,
subverts it, damage to women and nature,
as usual. The first farmers, awake since dark,
are setting up shop at the market, raising
their tents, stacking peaches and eggplants,
bunches of basil and sunflowers nestled
in buckets, fresh salmon someone drove up
from the coast on ice, blackberries, strawberries,
lemons, fennel, heirloom tomatoes. Race.
Our history laid out before us in black and white.
Some of us wince, are ashamed, enraged.
Some grow tired of explaining. Others quietly
sorry it can’t just go on like this — people
we know — inequality a beloved tradition
and so convenient. No dogs allowed
per the health department. No sales until the bell
rings at 8:00. The crows have moved off
and a pair of doves takes their place, balancing
easy on the wire, that gurgle, that peaceable cooing.
~~~~
Molly Fisk is a poet and essayist who lives in Nevada County, California. She was an inaugural-year Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow.
Poem copyright 2025 Molly Fisk.
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Oh, this is a poem to keep and to treasure! Thank you, Molly!
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From crows strutting through our detritus, to doves cooing their selfhoods easy on the wire, the poem shows that beauty is everywhere; even among the countervailing forces of ugliness, injustice, and evil.
Hope can still take wings, early and late. Molly Fisk shows us much of our present world in all its flux. Lovely writing that pays attention.
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Thanks, Jim.
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Love this. Thank you Molly.
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I love Molly Fisk’s imagery–she takes the reader into that real world, beautiful, difficult, alive.
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She really does. Molly is so subtle that her technique is invisible.
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Ah, what counts as nourishment. This poem counts. Thanks for the chance to see this.
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🐦⬛ 🌫️🌻🥬🫐🍓🍅🍋💔⛔️ 🐦⬛
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“Inequality a beloved tradition” “Damage to women and nature” the crows, the doves = that fear I wake with in the morning and the birds I feed to comfort me.
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Molly Fisk has a keen eye and generous heart — this poem wakes us up to so many moments we would have never seen and makes them ours with her fine observations and witnessing:
“Our history laid out before us in black and white.
Some of us wince, are ashamed, enraged.
Some grow tired of explaining.”
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Thank you so much, Laure-Anne. xo
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”damage to women and nature, / as usual” the theme of my students final paper of the semester, an op-ed on the myriad benefits of educating girls, summed up in this seemingly simple phrase. Thank you.
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I like the photograph of Molly because it complements her poems. This is a woman who is joyful and alive. She is paying attention.
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Love this, Molly. It’s a braid of things. I love the way the crows repeat.
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Thanks, Doug. The poet braids politics and small town life, nature and history, abstract language and concrete, the natural and human worlds. And she makes it look easy. The language is conversational and the tone is warm. Brilliant work.
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xox
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Doug, thank you!
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