Kate Bremer

1. Medicare Test (from Naomi Shihab Nye)

What year is it? Sunday?
What’s the donkey’s name;
Why is she wearing orange slippers?
Draw a Kit Kat Klock–her Krazy eyes
And rigid plastic tail are mine.

Drinking water, Meals on Wheels;
I won’t write about killing children
(or adults) in Gaza
Ukraine, Salvador. First
They took the Venezuelans.
Can you pass a Medicare test
If you are steeped in conspiracy–
A member of the death cult?

All I know is Blue Bees
Live on my porch.

2. Antreena

Wind is here and birdsong,
John Prine and Townes–
Burnt out fires warm the cabin walls.
Keep breathing. Squirrels on the roof,
Keep the compost tuning,
Read a poem a day and wear a winter hat
In April. Carolina Wren. Wend.
Scrambling the signal. My antenna today
Is this ancient oak, Arabella.
No crypto, no AI, no A1, just branches
And leaves. I swear my clock has stopped;
Spider webs catch debris, decorate the tear,
tier, tree. Tree tears are bending time
Bigfoot cloaks in the bark, Barks in the cloak
Old glass wind chime, bones toweled
Into rock walls, limbs make
Window screens. Screams.

3. Big Hands

Bad weedeater, bats,
Bad chainsaw, bad bullets.
Let the kittens drink, feed
The Odalisque. Let her rest…
I love a cantina with colored
Light bulbs and Aztec calendars.

Crunching donkeys, hawk and titmouse.
Hay presence, tangled mane, frogs
Touch ground and sing at night;
Fox calls screech owl. Tiny wires
And flashes in my brain spark heart
And hands and purple ink.

My calendar is pre-Equinox,
Pre-birdsong, Kwanza begins
And Boxing Day–writing on
December. Donkey reaches quietude.
Stillness and Community–
Birdsong and Blue Bees will bring us home.

Kate Bremer lives in Central Texas and loves to host writing gatherings in nature with her small herd of donkeys and a horse.

This poem appeared in Record of Dissent: Poems of Protest in an Authoritarian Age — Summer 2025, published by The Chaos Section Poetry Project. We’ll be featuring each poem from the collection individually in the weeks ahead. You can read the full collection or download a free PDF of the chapbook here.