A Banned Book poem

In honor of Banned Books Week, I’m sharing a poem I wrote that involves banned books. It was originally published by Rat’s Ass Review in their Fall-Winter 2022 issue.

THE BANNED BOOKMOBILE
 
Do you need a special license to drive
a bus of books? Children
 
are more fragile; books,
more combustible.
 
Children’s minds need fire,
need those books to start a blaze.
 
How else to know that a pair of penguin
dads can raise a chick?
 
That witches and wizards can be evil
or good or somewhere in the flawed between?
 
That even the bluest eye cannot
confer beauty and love?
 
That it’s a sin to kill
a mockingbird?