THE INHERITANCE

by Jim Bellanca

Gainesville, Georgia, 2020 (Shutterstock)

Jim Crow’s obituary read,

“After a lengthy illness, Jim has passed away,

His Crow name now just history.” 

I thought “maybe not, maybe so.”

(You cannot trust the news these days.)

 

I knew Jim’s sister Jane had moved to Toronto

with her DACA son Juan

a surprise, a ten-year caboose

behind three sisters college gone,

had joined the family late.

Juan Crow was the most interesting one,

a son who’d volunteered for war, 

three tours in Afghanistan’s battle fields,

a Silver Cross and long times spent from love.

Back home, a hero named, he learned again, 

(most definitely not his first experience),

the curse of Jim Crow’s name, 

with his life separated by skin

in school,

        —at water fountains

        —on school bus ride

        —in restaurants

        —in restrooms

        —in voting booths

        —in marriage beds

the profile depicting all brown men

as one no matter where or who or when

ICE labeled shady caricatures,  

        —“beaner”

        —“wetback”

        —“gringo”​

        —“spic”

who tequila too much, siesta too long, 

just “don’t belong” on our turf;

accused of job stealing, rape, and more, 

tattooed as M-13,

by Presidential decree,

      —“the worst of hombres”

      —“the most detestable of human beings”

      —“the lowest despicable animal beast”

      —“a greaser druggy poisoning our lands”

any excuse the man can name

while hooded fiends from ICE 

day-quota-sized kidnapping any brown man

      —in church or school  

      —in hospital bed

      —in shopping mall

      —in strawberry fields 

      —in pizza huts

all blared and shared in local tv news, 

dread images bent with bowed shaved heads, 

arms tattoed with criminal marks

slow marched to caged jail cells,

(no one knows where)

—to scare the most innocent

—to leave their family love 

—to end their journey to freedom’s land

—to prove the power of the President

            by breaking what laws, he wished.

 

Juan Crow’s red blood

once given to save the land, the nation he loved,

no longer flows free. Juan sits in Alcatraz,

in his separate unequal cell

all son and martyr and hero dream

of Jim Crow newborn, a cosmic transfer,

a heritage inherited without recourse

Jim’s curse transferred to Juan, 

a lifetime injustice to bare, 

all ball and chain and prison wrack, 

all Sisyphus rock on his back.

Jim Bellanca, former English teacher, publisher and gadfly, now a late blooming poet, favors paining memory images about nature, family, peace, social justice and wry comments about senior life. He fervently assumes a “No Prufrock I” position when he writes about social injustice. More than two dozen poetry journals including Witcraft, Write City zine, Aerial Journey. Down In the Dirt, Sparks of Caliope, Westwood Quarterly, The Lyric, and East on Central have published his poems.