The Coming Revolt of the Guards By Carol A. Smith

The Rising Phoenix Review

May 3

The Coming Revolt of the Guards

…the Establishment cannot survive without the obedience and loyalty of millions of people who are given small rewards to keep the system going…[who] become the guards of the system…If they stop obeying, the system falls.

—from Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, chapter 23

When I grow up, I want to be a guard.

Teaching students to manage multiple stories,
letting them wear rainbows and read rich texts.

Treating patients with symptoms of cultural disease,
believing their pain is more than a ploy to score drugs.

Preaching love toward all people, reserving hatred for evil,
calling out public figures who demonize the poor and powerless.

Insisting victims of mass incarceration and sentence disparity
do not choose prison because they think it's easy.

A guard in a just community that takes pencil and eraser
to systemic equations, changing the signs from less-than to equals

By Carol A. Smith

Biography:

Carol A. Smith is an MFA in Poetry candidate at Arcadia University. For 30 years, she has taught language arts, literacy, and college composition. She writes personal and sociopolitical poems, often reflecting upon the tense and unpredictable intersections of the two. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in The Last Stanza Poetry Journal; In Parentheses; Radical Teacher; Mobius: Journal of Social Change; Sad Girl Diaries; and Poets Against Racism and Hate USA. A Philadelphia native, Carol now resides in Southern New Jersey and teaches at Rowan University. She can be reached at c.a.smith.author@gmail.com.
Instagram: Carolasmith_reader-writer.