Their homes, cone-shaped poles
of wood covered with buffalo hides.
Set up to break down quickly
to move to a safer place.
She sits inside of one of them.
Adorning her dresses, her family’s shirts
with beads and quills.
Watches over her children. Skins, cuts
and cooks the buffalo meat. Pounds clothes
clean with smooth wet river rocks.
When she sees the blue cavalry
advancing, she begins to run again.
Is that what made America great,
back then?
African families working hard
on hot cotton farms. Sunrise to sunset,
six days a week. Monotony broken only
by their daily beatings. By their singing
of sad soulful songs.
Like factories in fields, dependent solely
upon the demands of cotton and cloth.
You could buy a man for a song, back then.
Is that what made America great,
once again?
There are swastikas in our streets today.
Black men being murdered. Whitelash.
While the new man at the top
tweets videos ranting of white power.
While the old man at the top
says he’ll make America great again.
They say the full moon was bigger and brighter
last year than it’s been in 73 years.
Than it’s been since Jackie Robinson
played his first big league baseball game.
Gil Hoy is a Best of the Net nominated Boston poet and semi-retired trial lawyer who studied poetry at Boston University through its Evergreen program. Hoy previously received a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science from Boston University, an M.A. in Government from Georgetown University, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. He served as a Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman for four terms. Hoy’s poetry has appeared most recently in Right Hand Pointing, Tipton Poetry Journal, Chiron Review, Ariel Chart, Indian Periodical, Rusty Truck, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, and TheNewVerse.News.