SHOUT By Laurie Halse Anderson

Read 3.17-3.22.19
 
Laurie Halse (rhymes with faults/assaults/haults) Anderson
is done with Speak
though it lives on--
that simple call, that wonder of story
in millions and millions of us who have read
 
one of my most choked-up SHOUT
moments—the electrician on movie set
whispering in the humid dark
of Ohio gym
as his hands reached for rolls of gaffing tape
for some scene to come:
 
"I am Melinda...a lot of us...
are like he--
it happened to us too" (196-197).
 
1 in 6 boys have been
sexually assaulted,
halted, faulted themselves, their stars--
 
how much this time now is for shouting:
All of us.
 
The way I did at 19 walking with girlheart
back to dorm
on midnight street,
predator preying, running straight for us
 
I SHOUTED and RAN
TOWARD him,
my most ferocious moment yet:
"WHAT THE *&(% O YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?"
 
SHOUTED, ran toward danger
to knock it off its track
meet crazy with crazy
after I'd already known crazy.
 
In SHOUT Laurie makes
intimate
knowledge
the splinters of home
fracture of family
that still offerec a tangy bright
broken beauty--
Father with war chest
in head/heart
later the labels to lay over memories
but for a long time the wonder
of daughter, the mystery of father
Mother who shouldered
her own heavy weights
mouth marbled by hurting husband
path littered with want.
 
How family forms us
and undoes us
folds and forges us upon
broken mirrors
and sometimes
frees us--
to Denmark and wide world
bridge-building, barn-raising
the tongue learning how
to press new sounds into
bright understanding
 
And of course--
in the early pages,
the locomotive rumbling
the thudding dread
of when IT will arrive
and wrench handlebars
of narrative into
shame-soaked sorry
into rage-rabid reckoning
into dark night and open road
and car collision
 
The wonder of wondrous
writing—image heavy
how me—luck-drenched
girl whose #MeToo
moments were never really
worth mention--
but me--
how I become Melinda,
become Laurie become Alice
become Roxane become Dorothy
become Christine become Amanda
become Sandra become Alli become Maya
become countless unnamed, unspoken
boys, girls, two-spirits
become us
through the wide world
of page
of reread
of details
of feel and ache
empathy and awful
 
us, arisen
to SHOUT
the shame out