© 2024 WNIJ and WNIU
Northern Public Radio
801 N 1st St.
DeKalb, IL 60115
815-753-9000
Northern Public Radio
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Poetically Yours Ep. 8 'Threat'

Provided by Margo Anderson.

Welcome to Poetically Yours, where you'll hear the voices of Illinois poets as they share their words about the world around them. This week features Margo Anderson. Her poem is called, "Threat."

Threat

When did our children go from asking for help to wailing in pain? When did their subtle requests for change become screams of terror? When did high school stop being something challenging and turn into a literal fight for lives? Active shooter drills, stop the bleed training, and armed officers Rapists and racists on campus and a war outside Teen suicides and bomb threats Threats from within and from without Safety, a mask used to protect some rich guy in an ivory tower checking off boxes for appearance Killing our youth with constant fear along with gunfire They were never safe They will never be safe Not until we stop running through guidelines and lists and start hearing them Start dismantling the system that made things this way Stop substituting threats to their bodies with threats to their minds At what point does our reaction to the disease become worse than the disease itself? I fear we’re rapidly approaching that line

Margo Anderson was born and raised in Illinois but moved away to attend Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. After graduating with a bachelor’s in psychology, she moved back to Illinois to study LGBT and women’s studies at Northern Illinois University in Dekalb.

Today she works at Association for Individual Development in Aurora as a direct support person where she helps individuals with special needs. She also volunteers for Friends for Therapeutic Equine Activities in Wayne, Illinois where she uses the horses to enrich the lives of people with special needs. 

When she’s not working or volunteering, she enjoys numerous hobbies. They include: horseback riding, swimming, going to the gym, playing both board and video games, knitting, crocheting, reading, and writing poetry and prose. She also loves spending time with friends and family, playing with animals and enjoying nature. 

  • Yvonne Boose is a 2020 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of the GroundTruth Project. It's a national service program that places talented journalists in local newsrooms like WNIJ. You can learn more about Report for America at wnij.org.
Yvonne covers artistic, cultural, and spiritual expressions in the COVID-19 era. This could include how members of community cultural groups are finding creative and innovative ways to enrich their personal lives through these expressions individually and within the context of their larger communities. Boose is a recent graduate of the Illinois Media School and returns to journalism after a career in the corporate world.