SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE MOMENTS AFTER THE DEREK CHAUVIN VERDICT

a found poem

by Dick Westheimer

White folks in my feed: Thank God!

Black folks in my feed... 

White folks responding to white folks in my feed: Amen!

Black folks in my feed... 

White folks in my feed: Boom!

YES, YES, YES!!!!! Justice, sweet Justice!

A perfect trifecta...GUILTY, GUILTY, GUILTY.

Justice served. Black Lives Matter. Accountability today. 

A black death mattered. 

GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY ❤️❤️❤️

Black folks in my feed:

George Floyd is still gone.

God rest your soul, George Floyd.

Each day that I worry I will be next 

is another day 

without justice.

If there hadn’t been a video, 

there’d never have been a trial.

Time to organize our strength 

into power.

DO NOT forget 

the other three cops! They let it happen!

A white woman in my feed:

What a relief justice was served!

A Black woman in my feed posts a snapshot:

George Floyd holding his daughter Gianna. 

Black women in my feed: 

Thank God for Darnella Frazier. 

Keep ALL the witnesses in your prayers. 

All of them.

I exhaled...and as soon as I did, 

I started sobbing. This is what it’s like 

to be Black in America.

This! Darnella! A Black girl...now a Black Woman. 

I am thankful for you!

White folks in my feed: 

Justice. Guilty x 3!! We can all breathe!!!

Black men in my feed:  I  still  can’t  breathe.

For over 40 years, Dick Westheimer has—in the company of his wife Debbie—lived, gardened and raised five children, on their plot of land in the rural US in Clermont County, Ohio. He recently has taken up with poets and the writing of poetry to make sense of the world. His poems have appeared in Rattle, Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, Riparian Anthology, and The New Verse News, among others.

DARNELLA'S DUTY

by Laurie Kuntz

Darnella Frazier is the brave young woman who filmed the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020. The artwork is from the official Peace and Healing for Darnella Fund at gofundme.

How does it feel to be 17,
and just want to hold your life in your
glistening palm, go to the corner
and buy a sparkling water to quench
a parched mouth that longs to sing?

How does it feel to witness
a purpose too cruel
for all your 17 rotations
around a sun you only want to bask in?

How does it feel to beg a name,
witness a life breaking,
while your opened ebony eyes,
see loss and corruption corralled
to the borderless sky?

And, how does the humid wind feel
as you watch it carry one man's life
to a crevice where only the wind can go?

Laurie Kuntz is an award-winning poet and film producer. She taught creative writing and poetry in Japan, Thailand and the Philippines. Many of her poetic themes are a result of her working with Southeast Asian refugees for over a decade after the Vietnam War years. She has published one poetry collection (Somewhere in the Telling, Mellen Press) and two chapbooks (Simple Gestures, Texas Review Press and Women at the Onsen, Blue Light Press), as well as an ESL reader (The New Arrival, Books 1 & 2, Prentice Hall Publishers). Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and her chapbook Simple Gestures won the Texas Review Poetry Chapbook  Contest. She was editor in chief of Blue Muse Magazine and a guest editor of Hunger Mountain Magazine.  She has produced documentaries on the repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Law and currently is producing a documentary on the peace process and reintegration of guerrilla soldiers in Colombia. She is the executive  producer of an Emmy-winning short narrative film Posthumous. Recently retired, she lives in an endless summer state of mind.