AGAIN, A GUN

by Akua Lezli Hope

As Stephon Clark’s death shows, we live in a time when the term “unarmed” is becoming inconsequential—and, for a black man in certain settings, meaningless. —Jelani Cobb, The New Yorker, April 5, 2018. Photograph by Max Whittaker / NYT / Redux via The New Yorker.

Whose cell phone is a gun
Whose frown is a gun
Whose toy is a gun
Whose today is a gun
Whose smile is a gun
Whose tomorrow is a gun
Whose wallet is a gun
Whose loud is a gun
Whose soft is a gun
Whose CDs are a gun
Whose silence is a gun
Whose protest is a gun
Whose stop is a gun
Whose go is a gun
Whose yes is a gun
Whose no is a gun
Whose pipe is a gun
Whose hand is a gun
Whose stand is a gun
Whose advance is a gun
Whose retreat is a gun
Whose plea is a gun
Whose kneel is a gun
Whose showerhead is a gun
Whose question is a gun
Whose answer is a gun
                         is a gun
                         is a gun

Akua Lezli Hope is a creator who uses sound, words, fiber, glass, handmade paper and wire to create poems, patterns, stories, music, adornments, sculpture and peace whenever possible. A paraplegic, she has founded a nonprofit paratransit firm. Her poetry collection Them Gone will be published by The Word Works Publishing on June 1, 2018.

MY PTSD, or 558 AND STILL COUNTING

by Akua Lezli Hope




Each new report reopens old wounds:
time we pulled off the Jersey highway to nap
police lights blinding as husband yanked me
awake that night, fear and fury urgent in his voice
uniforms on both sides yelling, you can’t rest
on this white shoulder, threatening me back
to 16 with sweet baby sister on the subway
the short uniformed man’s hand on his stick
did it matter that we were on our way to Natural History
that she was only four like Lavish Diamond’s
girl made to witness violence and her protector’s
vulnerability?  We thought no, no, never again
when grandmother Eleanor Bumpurs was shot
at home for no good reason, never again be killed
for art, for its denial, or repression like Michael Stewart
never again when Abner Louima was broomsticked
and never again when Amadou Diallo was drowned
in a hale of 41 mistaken, misguided missiles and before
that did we think ourselves lucky, nothing permanent
when it was only a night stick upside Doug’s head
at the protest, only blunt force trauma,
not a noose in a lonely cell like Sandra Bland,
not spine-severing vehicular lynching like Freddie Gray,
not bullets, bullets, bullets as in Delrawn Small,
a father angry at being imperiled, bullets for preteen
Tamir Rice playing alone in the park, bullets
in Alton Sterling selling CDs, number 558
to be shot and killed by police this year
and I tremble remembering, remembering
all the insults hurled, the bullets I’ve dodged

Author’s Note: Eleanor Bumpurs was an African-American woman who was shot and killed on October 29, 1984 by New York City police. Michael Jerome Stewart  was a graffiti artist, beaten into a coma by New York City Transit Police for graffiti on a subway station wall  and died September 28, 1983. Abner Louima, was tortured by Brooklyn police (1997) and won $8.75 million dollars. Douglass David Walker was the founder of Alien Planetscapes and an activist. Amadou Diallo a West African immigrant was shot 41 times by 4 policemen in the doorway of his apartment building (1999). Sandra Bland died in a Texas jail cell after a traffic stop. Lavish/Diamond, the girlfriend of Philando Castile, broadcast the aftermath of their deadly traffic stop. Delrawn Small, a 37-year-old father of three, was killed in front of his family at a traffic light by an off duty Brooklyn cop while on their way to see July 4th fireworks this year. See “The Counted” at The Guardian.

Akua Lezli Hope is a creator who uses sound, words, fiber, glass, and metal, to create poems, patterns, stories, music, ornaments, adornments, and peace whenever possible. She has won fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Ragdale, Hurston Wright writers, and the National Endowment for The Arts.  She is a Cave Canem fellow. Her manuscript Them Gone won Red Paint Hill Publishing’s Editor’s Prize and will be published in 2016.

ARS POETICA

by Megan Collins

Trivia Weatherspoon takes a photo of the mural depicting Alton Sterling following a July 7 prayer service and vigil at Triple S Food Mart where Sterling was shot and killed by Baton Rouge Police in the early hours of July 5. —The New Orleans Advocate, July 6, 2016. Advocate staff photo by HILARY SCHEINUK.

I don’t have a poem in me
for Alton Sterling.
I don’t want to write
how they laid out his body
like one in a coffin
before they even shot him.

I’m sick of stanzas
and what it takes
to build them.
The Italian for room,
yet they cannot house
the living or the dead,
can’t keep people safe
when the locks on their doors
are only words.

Look how these walls
tremble. See how the lines
never line up,
how they cannot be stacked
like men
and women
in the seasick belly
of a ship.

Look how the waves
keep surging,
how the water still gets in.
It doesn’t matter
how tightly
I craft my language
or if my metaphor
is mixed—
there’s no proper seal
in a sentence; there’s no one
these rooms can save.

Even now, at the close
of what I’ve written,
see how much I’ve already failed him—
how the end of this poem
is only a period
when it should be an infinite scream.

Megan Collins holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University. She teaches creative writing at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts and Central Connecticut State University. She is also Senior Poetry Editor of 3Elements Review. Her work has appeared in many journals, including Linebreak, Off the Coast, Rattle, Spillway, and Tinderbox.

BUT IN BATON ROUGE

by John Dooley

The figure of a large
unarmed middle-aged black
skinned man drowns in a fog
of gun smoke and his own blood,
beneath two badged blue-uniformed
policemen holding guns with triggers
completely pulled, magazines empty.

An eight point buck hangs head down,
feet tethered to a large oak,
reminds me of a thing of beauty,
desiccated, emasculated, wasted, bled,
hung out to dry for the glory
of the commemorative photo;
great white hunters stand
proudly in solidarity nearby.

But in Baton Rouge, the red stick,
there are no antlers, no ruminants,
no prosecutors, and no meat lockers.
The conviction rate for law enforcement
officers murdering black men is .01%
from all white juries. Although black
skinned persons comprise less than 25%
of the population, they comprise 100%
of all officer-related murders in Baton Rouge.
Flagrant fragrance, flat line, no scents at all,
no rhyme or reason, a dead fall.

John Dooley lives in the national forest near Prescott, Arizona, teaches in the Masters in Counseling Psychology program at Prescott College, and advocates for peace.