Golden Fangs

Today is the 57th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots

Golden Fangs 

Lock and load Gil Scott Heron,
Public Enemy, The Clancy Brothers &
Tommy Makem, Christy Moore, Woody Guthrie,
Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs, The Last Poets

Dust off Derrida and DeBord,
and before it’s scrubbed
Google Deep Ecology,
Mai ’68, The Haitian Revolution,
Coxey’s Army, Nat Turner, the Suffrage Parade,

Stonewall where Van Ronk fought 
on the side of the angels,
not stopping to ask why

Your value, far above a 780 credit score,
shall not be cheaply extracted –
Their fangs are gold

because they are rotten
and filled but nothing gold
will fucking stay

first published in WAIT OUT THE BURN (Ghost City Press, 2025). Read it all for free or pay what you wish here.

Jason O’Toole is Poet Laureate Emeritus of North Andover, MA and was co-founder of the Anne Bradstreet Poetry Contest. He serves on the advisory board of the New England Poetry Club, and as treasurer of the Independent Living Resource Center San Francisco. He was the recipient of the 2025 Amy Lowell Prize and the 2026 judge for this contest. He also serves as a judge for the Tom Nattell Peace Poetry Prize and the Capital District Slam Poetry Festival in NY. His third full collection of poetry is The Strange Misgivings of the Sadly Gifted (Dead Man’s Press Ink). Recent poems and prose have appeared in the anthology Love is for All of Us (Storey Publishing), as well as Wednesday Magazine, Ghost City Press, The Somerville Times, and Phil Lit.