Revolutionary Love
by Lee Anne Roquemore
Her felt board stories taught this tiny little girl about a half-God-man who loved
illogically
wrecklessly
She told me stories of love so big it set the world free
Then she raged at me
when I grew up to try to
love
just the same way
she’d taught me.
It turns out the puppets weren’t meant to teach.
They were made to distract
while the grown ups
focused on their glow up
not realizing
their stories were raising
revolutionaries.
So we come back to our Mother church,
asking why her stories about our Father God
don’t align with our fathers and mothers
and we can’t help but wonder
if she was lying all along
if that love is real
if we aren’t supposed to turn over tables
and set captives free
after all, what did you think you were teaching me?
Lee Anne Roquemore 
I’m not ignoring your writings. I read “Revolutionary Love” very late last night (early this morning) and again this afternoon between Zoom calls. Stunning insightful poetry! You distill the poignancy of a vivid memory down to its bone and marrow and chart the course of its bloodflow through your life’s journey with aesthetic clarity that leaves the reader chilled by your grasp of being human presence in the world while at the same time releasing tidal surges and recessions of emotional collage and gestalt that paint truth and reality in stark relief. Brilliant. This verse simultaneously shamed and vindicated my parental efforts with laser precision:
It turns out the puppets weren’t meant to teach.
They were made to distract
while the grown ups
focused on their glow up
not realizing
their stories were raising
revolutionaries.
“focused on their glow up” is raw pure genius. I think I may even guess who you were thinking of in this poem … but you need not tell me. I would suggest, however, that whenever your poetry, especially, has someone in particular at its center, simply say, e.g., “for Sherry” under the title. It’s time to take that boldness at work at this poem publicly in their faces, while leaving it just ambiguous enough that the one in the crosshairs will know the bullet is theirs at just the right moment. At the same time, the ambiguity leaves you room — if there’s any blowback from the target — to say, “Oh? Well, actually, Sherry, the poem is for a different Sherry I know today. Sorry, but I really wasn’t thinking of you at all.”
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A nit of a tiny symmetry to consider: if you capitalize “mother” as “Mother” the metaphor is improved IMHO in this verse:
So we come back to our Mother church,
asking why her stories about our Father God
don’t align with our fathers and mothers
and we can’t help but wonder
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