My Personal Favorite with Joy Gaines-Friedler

A Poetry Blog

At this moment in time, which of your poems is your personal favorite, and why?

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This blog asks the poet:

At this moment in time, which of your own poems is your personal favorite, and why?

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We Will Not March Back

A Golden Shovel in homage to Amanda Gorman

– for Linda

I am the one who once thought that we

would track the sky together, the will

of long-necked herons seeking open water, not

this forced alone-ness — this march

through gunshot trying to find a way back.

Consider a staircase of missing risers. It’s easier to

descend. Hidden holes hide the risk of slipping into what

could plunge us into denuded space. At five I was

terrified by those dark gaps, but

still, I braved the basement to move

toward what could be discovered there, to

see my grandfather in the eyes of what

he painted, still-life faces, the shall

and shalt not formalities he knew to be

truth, simply by being a-

live, unlabeled, unafraid of country.

At fifteen we believed in the tilt-a whirl, that

spinning was a metaphor for what is

and would be our future, sure to leave us bruised

but willing. Bruised but

whole

We hungered for the benevolent,

hung Joplin and Dylan on our walls but

got guns instead. Women rose bold

with power, our bodies fierce—

but if not for that gun…your husband’s gun and

no restrictions…we’d whirl, we’d spin…free.

____________________

Golden Shovel: words read down the right side are lines from Amanda Gorman: The Hill We Climb

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Joy: Currently my personal favorite, We Will Not March Back speaks to both the unique scourge of gun violence in the U.S. & at the same time the sense of hope Amanda Gorman’s poem gave us at the inauguration of Joe Biden in 2021. The irony is palpable. My “side” of the poem is about the murder of my best friend, Linda. She & I talked or saw each other every day since we were fifteen. We had breakfast together that morning. I hugged her goodbye & told her I loved her. That evening her husband killed her. Most Americans are hungering for gun laws. Linda’s husband bought the gun he used to kill her with, only a day after being released from a stay on the hospital psyche ward. He bought the gun at Kmart. The form of this poem allows the tragedy of a country, not so free, at least not free from gun violence, to be contrasted with the symbol of hope Biden offered by asking Amanda Gorman, a young black woman, to write & read the Inaugural Poem for his inauguration. Her youthful belief in the future matched that of Linda & myself at her age. My generation too, as I wrote in this poem, hungered for the benevolent. Linda’s 3-year-old son’s freedom to be raised by his loving mother was cut short by lack of gun regulation. Still I retain hope that, as Gordon wrote, our country remains “bold, fierce and free.”

This poem received a Best of The Net nomination from Waterwheel Review, 2022.

Bio: Joy Gaines-Friedler is an award winning author of six books of poetry. Her book Capture Theory is a 2018 Forward Review Indie Press, Book of The Year Finalist & a DaVinci Prize Finalist. Her latest book, Secular Audacity was published by Mayapple Press, 2025. www.joygainesfriedler.com

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A little about your host:

KELLY FORDON's latest poetry collection, What Trammels the Heart, was published by SFAPress in 2025. Her short story collection, I Have the Answer (Wayne State University Press, 2020), was chosen as a Midwest Book Award Finalist and an Eric Hoffer Finalist. Her first full-length poetry collection, Goodbye Toothless House (Kattywompus Press, 2019), was an Eyelands International Prize Finalist and an Eric Hoffer Finalist. It was later adapted into a play by Robin Martin and published in The Kenyon Review Online. Her novel-in-stories, Garden for the Blind, was published by WSUP in 2015. She teaches at Springfed Arts in Detroit and online, where she also runs a fiction podcast called “Let's Deconstruct a Story.” http://www.letsdeconstructastory.substack.com.

What Trammels the Heart is on sale right now for 40% off at tamupress.com with the code HEART40 :)