SHOUT(21)

to write Twisted,

my song of admiration

to young men paying the price for their fathers’ failures the collective noun I’m seeking is “curiosity”

we have a curiosity of boys waiting on the truth

and when their questions

go unanswered

the suffering begins for

an anguish of victims





emergency, in three acts




ACT ONE

Once upon a time, a year or so after Speak was published

a high school in New Jersey invited an author (guess who)

to speak about a book (you know the one) Picture this: the author (yep, you guessed right) takes the stage for the first presentation and stands in the spotlight owns the microphone

preaches facts about power and bodies and sex and violence speaks up, on fire

INTERMISSION, BUT BRIEF: One thousand students tumble out next thousand students roll in Showtime!

ACT TWO

The author (still me) opens her mouth, my mouth, but instead of spitting words,

the fire alarm erupts silencing me.

It is the only way Principal Principal— quaking in his shiny black shoes, either terrified of parents or guilty as hell— can think to shut me up the entire school mingles in the drizzly parking lot a group of girls gathers around me quietly, quickly speaking

of the boys who touch them in the halls, pull them under the stairs rape

whomever they can get drunk enough on the weekends

the alarm bells keep ringing and ringing and ringing

but no rescue arrives ACT THREE

When the screaming alarms are finally silenced Principal Principal tells me my day is done

talking about sex

and rape

and bodies

and touching

and consent

and violence

is not appropriate for the children under his care

because

those things don’t ever happen in his school





librarian on the cusp of courage




“I loved your book,” says the librarian “Prom, not Speak.”

I open my mouth to— “Course I can’t have it in my library,” she adds.

I close my mouth

“The main character,” she rushes on I listen

“She’s disrespectful to authority, cuts class, sleeps with her boyfriend . . .”

I wait

“We can’t have those kinds of examples on the shelves.”

Bingo “And by the end of the book?” I ask “Well . . .” She touches her crucifix.

I wait thinking of the miles of empty shelves in the hearts of her students “Well”— blinks her doll-blue eyes—

“she does change and grow by the end.

And the prom scenes were fun.”

Exactly the opening I was hoping for

now we can have a

conversation

She drops her eyes to the concrete floor.

“I can’t afford to lose my job.”

She runs.





inappropriate dictators




A public school superintendent in Florida proclaimed

“As of September 8, 2017,

no instructional materials (textbooks, library books, classroom novels, etc.)”—THIS “etc.” SLAYED ME— “purchased and/or used by the school district shall contain any profanity,

cursing”—REDUNDANCY IS A SIGN YOU DIDN’T

PAY ATTENTION IN ENGLISH CLASS— “or inappropriate subject matter.”

“Inappropriate”

was when I burst

into flames

Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as publick Liberty, without Freedom of Speech.

—Benjamin Franklin, 1722

So many problems could be solved with just a teeny bit of knowledge about American government,

the Constitution,

and the function of the Supreme Court, like in Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District No. 26

v. Pico, 457 US 853, 872 (1982), when the Supremes memorably sang: Supreme Court precedent condemns school officials who remove books “simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek by their removal to ‘prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.’”

Censorship is the child of fear the father of ignorance

and the desperate weapon of fascists everywhere.





innocence




censoring my books in the name of “innocence”

will not build the fence you want, it’s not a defense

against danger or stranger, the friend or foe

whose hands want to know the feel of your child your baby girl or maybe your boy, a toy for their yearning for violence, depravity the gravity

of which will pull your child into wild denial

her pain untamed

by your drugs prescribed, or her drugs street-dirty. . . .

nothing can offer relief from the reality that you failed and jailed her happiness in a grave too deep for forgiveness the false innocence you render for them

by censoring truth

protects only you





the word