Courtney Felle | Self-Portrait In My Defense | Poets Resist

Courtney Felle (she/her) is a poet, essayist, and activist living between Western New York and rural Ohio. Her writing has appeared in Half Mystic Press, L’Éphémère Review, Honey & Lime, The Ellis Review, and other publications. She interns at the Kenyon Reviewand is the editor-in-chief of (inter)change journal. She is a big fan of tea, breakfast food, the Japanese House, and soft blankets.

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Also by Courtney Felle: Tu-Lips International Women’s Day 2019 and I Did Not Die

Poets Resist
Edited by Kanika Lawton
June 30, 2019

Courtney Felle

Self-Portrait In My Defense

A poem doesn’t have to save every life for the lives it saved to count. A solution starts in the sidewalk cracks, hopscotching through elementary school shooting drills & asking for some relief. Every time I see myself written I am again eleven & Naomi Shihab Nye is telling me to make a fist. Look, Naomi. I am squeezing. Naomi, you know I wanted to die even then & then, for a brief moment, I didn’t. Meanwhile, I remember. I hang poems in the hallways & ask my friends to slip them into their pockets. Three days ago bombers in Sri Lanka killed over three hundred people, & the college students I know are still talking about Notre Dame & what’s for lunch. Meanwhile, I am counting the bodies, but awareness isn’t enough. What good to know how many make up the dead? I miss their animation. We all miss people we never met, some of them ourselves. Look, Naomi, I am still squeezing again & again. I am writing for a brief moment. For the survivors. For the kids still crouching under desks, where I also am, waiting. I hope those in the cracks see themselves. I hope we stop.