THE HEART OF IT ALL

by Bradley McIlwain

Whitman—

I hear the chains

Across N. America

At Capitol Hill

Where we’ve all become 

Capital—

Loose change

In the pockets 

Of pirate politicians

We elected 

To change—

Only to decline it; 

False prophets 

Who paid God 

To burn Sodom & Gommorah 

But they can’t kill my pride 

The way they put a bullet 

In Bonnie & Clyde.

People are still dying—

Trayvon. Floyd. Till—

Still, they shot Lewis in bed

Like Billy the Kid 

20—unarmed 

Dreams spilling out onto the sheets.

Ohio weeps in the streets.

Neil Young heard the drums;

Police are cutting us down—

What’s at the heart of it all?

You abolish slavery,

But commercialize prisons;

One shackle for another, 

Brother divided by brother

Under the foot 

Of the blood spangled banner

Still soaked in the soil

Of migrant workers

From the states to the border 

Across bus stops and shelters—

The buck doesn’t stop

At Roe v. Wade

When in a state of insanity 

Some judge decides 

In a state of supremacy

That women no longer 

Have control 

Over their bodies?

Over… my… dead… body

It’s time

To untuck injustice where it lies

Unbury the dead

And loosen their tongues

So we can unlearn

The things our fathers 

Have done—and do.

I no longer trust in God

The way I trusted in you.

The all seeing eye 

Has lost its shine 

And I see you

In tent cities

Crying out for food—

Whitman, 

Our people yearn. 

We are the choir 

Of others raging 

For freedom across the voiceless night, 

Rattling the chains for change.

Bradley McIlwain works as a Teacher-Librarian, where he strives to provide meaningful and inclusive spaces for knowledge exchange and advocacy. He believes that poems and poets can be agents for social change. Bradley’s latest book, Dear Emily, was published by Roasted Poet Press in July.

IN WHICH I INTERROGATE MY FREQUENT RESPONSE

by Eileen Ivey Sirota

Surveillance video shows a Black 17-year-old struggling with staff at a Wichita juvenile center last fall before his death, which followed being restrained facedown for more than 30 minutes. Late on Friday [January 21, 2022], Sedgwick county released 18 video clips of what happened before Cedric Lofton (AP photo above) was rushed to a hospital on 24 September. He died two days later. The release of the clips followed the announcement by the Sedgwick county district attorney, Marc Bennett, that the Kansas “stand-your-ground” law prevented him from pressing charges because staff members were protecting themselves. Bennett said he struggled with whether an involuntary manslaughter charge was justified, but concluded it was not. Sedgwick county’s webpage crashed after the video was posted. —The Guardian, January 22, 2022. Videos are available at The Wichita Eagle.

what can grow

in this salty pool

 

that does not bring back

a single Emmett or Ahmaud

 

that does not cleanse

so much as one tainted tree

 

this sterile balm

 

useless as nipples on a tomcat:

white woman tears

 

 

Eileen Ivey Sirota is a poet and psychotherapist, the author of a chapbook, Out of Order, published by Finishing Line Press in 2020.  Her poems have also appeared in Calyx, Ekphrastic Review, District Lines, The New Verse News, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and Voices: The Art and Science of Psychotherapy.

LIZZO

by Judy Juanita

I am 100% behind you baby girl

Behind your superb black ass

Behind your exponential black ass

Behind all the big black women

We who are BeyBey

We who are BeyBey's kids

We who raised BeyBey

Who raised BeyBey's babies and babydaddies

We behind you Lizzo

Show that ass

Put that ass on the Lakers scoreboard

For the world to see

Your big fat cocoa ass

As important for the world to see as 

Emmett Till's bludgeoned face

"Let them see what they did to my boy

Let the world see what they did to my boy"

Let us worship Lizzo

That's right—Bow down

Before her big black ass 

Before her big black booty

Not injected into her backside by a Dominican doctor

Not leaking formaldehyde into her veins clotting her heart

Killing one more big fat implacable life

Fuck Brazilian butt lifts

Fuck the strip clubs that hire the women

Who pay with their very life for butts

That sit high on their hips

21st century Venus Hottentots

Fuck the only way these women will earn $2,000 a night $3,000 a night $4,000 a night

Instead of working at  Walmart

(Yeah yeah yeah do the math $15@ hr. times 30 hrs a week so they don't have to give them health benefits. That's $450 a week, $1800 a month, the living wage that Biden is fighting for? Get real. You'd hop on a plane to the Dominican Republic, leak silicone all over the seats armrests tray tables too for a big black ass a big black ass)

Lizzo's black ass is worth gold

Diamonds and Gucci

In the belly of the beast 

Same place where

Lizzo's Army yeah

A black only army for the descendants of Buffalo Soldiers and Tuskegee Airmen 

A big black beautiful army whose big black unbleached asshole emits the noxious gases called life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Same place where corner stores have filled those asses for decades with hostess twinkies butterfingers koolaid fruit loops sodas hogmaw and chitlins hot links potato salad macaroni and cheese sweet potato pie (BeyBey's son the athlete/personal trainer says with disgust, Ma, this is carbo overload, but eats at the christmas table because he too worships Lizzo once a year)

We love you Lizzo

Our anti-Lady Godiva

Our anti-Kardashian

Our anti-American

Miss America?

You're the missing America

The antidote to self-loathing

You had to be huge

In our face

All over the place

You are the dream deferred no more

You cannot be invisible

You will not live underground

Not one more day

Lizzo our Lizzo

Lizzo Lizzo Lizzo Lizzo Lizzo

You is You is You is

America the beautiful.

Judy Juanita's book of poetry Manhattan my ass, you're in Oakland won the 2021 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Her short story collection The High Price of Freeways won the Tartt Fiction Award and will be published by the University of West Alabama's Livingston Press in 2022. Het debut novel Virgin Soul was published by Viking in 2014. 

JANUARY 20, 2021 / DATE POEM

by Ethan Thayumanavan

Born November 20, 1942.

Inaugurated on January 20, 2021.

 

Born June 14, 1946.

Inaugurated on January 20, 2017.

 

Ruby Bridges: Born September 8, 1954.

First day in a white classroom on November 14, 1960.

 

Angela Davis: Born January 26, 1944.

Became the third Woman on the fbi’s most wanted list on August 18, 1970.

Released on bail after 16 months of incarceration on February 23, 1972.

Acquitted of all charges by an all-white jury on June 4, 1972.

 

Marsha P. Johnson: Born August 24, 1945.

Stonewalled the nypd on June 28, 1969.

The nypd ruled Marsha’s death a suicide on July 6, 1992.

 

Martin Luther King Jr: Born January 15, 1929.

Had a dream on August 28, 1963.

Went to the mountaintop on April 3, 1968.

Assassinated by white supremacists on April 4, 1968.

 

Emmett Till: Born July 25, 1941.

Whistled at a white girl on August 28, 1955.

He was two years older than

 

Tamir Rice: Born June 25, 2002.

Murdered by a white man with a badge on November 22, 2014.

 

jim crow: Born Juneteenth, 1865.

just won’t fucking

die

 

I imagine that mista past president has sat

underneath palms in the Middle East

but has never tasted the warm sweetness

of a date

 

can’t bring himself to put his lips on

Worn Leather and Scar Tissue and Age Lines

and Exhaustion and Folk Music and Survival

 

classrooms shove dates down my throat

put their hands over my mouth

so I have to swallow

don’t even prepare ‘em right

 

leave pits in my stomach

forget the date came from the tree

came from the seed

came from the pit

came from the date

 

which is to say that linearity and

history are both constructed.

what is a date

without person and place?

time does not march forward

unless we do

 

I hold a date in the palm of my hand

sink my teeth into it

bite down into the gooey, sticky sweetness

savor the moment

write my own History

write my own poem

call this a radical act

Ethan Thayumanavan is an aspiring poet of Indian descent, from Amherst, Massachusetts. He is a full-time student at Columbia University. His exploration of poetry began when he joined a collegiate spoken word poetry team, but his love for the written word has influenced his transition from performance to writing.

WITH A FACE LIKE MINE

by Rachel Mallalieu

I don’t want this to be 
about me, but of course it’s
always about me

With a face like mine,
a thousand ships were launched,
so needful were men of my rescue

With a face like mine,
a few words were said and
a fourteen-year-old boy was
beaten, shot and tossed
into the Tallahatchie River

With a face like mine, feel free
to burst into a black man’s home
while he’s eating ice cream
and demand that he shows you
his hands, and when he does not,
you can shoot him
when his blood stains the floor and
you realize your mistake,
stand in the hallway
and text instead of performing CPR

With a face like mine, the jury will
cry because you clearly didn’t mean
to do it, and (despite the racist texts)
you seem guileless, even
penitent (especially when you say
you wish you had died instead)
yes they find you guilty, but the bailiff
will smooth your hair and the
judge will give you her Bible
you will receive a light sentence
and still be young enough to bear children
once you’ve served your time

With a face like mine,
when the anguished brother
of the man you murdered embraces you
and offers forgiveness,
many will see your blonde hair next to
his black skin and consider
the sordid case closed

With a face like mine,
tears are weapons
so really, you should be careful
with a face like mine

Rachel Mallalieu is an Emergency Physician and mother of five. She writes poetry in her spare time. Her work has been featured in Blood and Thunder and is upcoming in Haunted Waters Press.

GHAZAL

by Judith Terzi

Emmett Till (July 25, 1941 - August 28, 1955)

Heather Heyer (May 29, 1985 - August 12, 2017)

Simeon Wright died 2 years ago. A faithful cousin of Emmett Till.
Heather Heyer's also gone. A victim of hatred like Emmett Till.

Two men shot Emmett, 14, sank him with a fan from a cotton gin.
One man killed Heather with another machine. Like Emmett Till.

Simeon, 12, saw the men point the gun, grab the teen from his bed.
His life spent haunted by the abduction of his cousin, Emmett Till.

Heather followed her conscience. She marched to oppose the rage.
A street for her in Charlottesville. In Chicago, one named Emmett Till.

Heather was murdered while crossing her street not too long ago.
Sixty-four years have passed since the murder of Emmett Till.

Judith Terzi is the author of Museum of Rearranged Objects (Kelsay Books, 2018) as well as of five chapbooks including If You Spot Your Brother Floating By and Casbah (Kattywompus Press). Her poetry appears widely in literary journals and anthologies, has received nominations for Best of the Net and Web, and has been read on the BBC. She holds an M.A. in French Literature and is a former educator who taught high school French for many years as well as English at California State University, Los Angeles, and in Algiers, Algeria.

UNDER THE GOD, CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA, 12 AUGUST 2017

by Kenneth E. Harrison, Jr.





           Watchin' their heads in the toilet bowl
           Don't see supremacist hate

           Right wing dicks in their boiler suits

           Picking out who to annihilate
               —David Bowie, “Under the God,” Tin Machine (1989)


 Forgive us our Confederate bedsheets & the flag above the headboard.
 Forgive us the need to be right.
 Forgive us the Civil War was never really about slavery.
 Forgive us Emmett Till we love our heritage.
 Forgive us a matter of pride carrying torches through your campus.
 Forgive us blood & soil.
 Forgive us fashionable alt-right haircuts & Duck Dynasty beards.
 Forgive us whatever will get us laid.
 Forgive us fuck the immigrants & Muslims what’s wrong with America.
 Forgive us Alex Jones says.
 Forgive us it’s Black Lives Matter who’s racist.
 Forgive us T***p’s sending a message.
 Forgive us whatever pisses off the liberal snowflakes.
 Forgive us George Lincoln Rockwell didn’t buy evolution either.
 Forgive us Michael Brown & Trayvon Martin were thugs.
 Forgive us it’s in our economic interest.
 Forgive us our First Amendment rights.
 Forgive us & leave the statue.
 Forgive us our white fathers never did anything wrong.


Kenneth E. Harrison, Jr.'s poems have appeared most recently in Beloit Poetry Journal, Cutbank, Numero Cinq, and Verse Daily.

3/5 OF ALL OTHER BEATS AND RHYTHMS: 2006 TO 2015

by Elbert Tavon Briggs

Black Line-Carved Djembe Drum

The beats make me think

The drums keep beating

That same Ole beat again

moved Mrs. Mamie Till-Mobley’s

14-year-old son to the Tallahatchie River

Rhythms moved the strange fruit

Rhythms bruised the strange fruit

We have to find some space on dry land

from sea to not so shiny

Those beats moved

Derrion Albert from Fenger High School

in blood all over cyberspace

Medgar was removed from earth forever

Malcolm X was killed teaching

Dr. King met the same fate preaching

Fred Hampton was shot in a room while sleeping

The beats make me think

The drums keep beating

Those beats moved Addie Mae, Denise, Carole, and Cynthia from

Birmingham 16th Street Baptist Church

into heavenly spaces, and I had to face this

they were children just like me

Rhythms moved the strange fruit.

Rhythms bruised the strange fruit.

The drums were beating on March 1, 2012,

same ole view

the rhythms were not new

that moved 17-year-old Chris Wormely out of high school

into thin air

while talking to the principled

The drums were beating

Spring and Summer of 2006

The drums were beating for

Siretha “Nugget: White – 10-years old

Tsarina Powel – 12-years old

Starkesia Reed – 14-years old

Latasha Harlins – 15 – years old

Ryann Brown – 18-years old

The beats make me think

The drums keep beating

2007, 16-year-old Blair Holt

became the teacher of us all

made his friend fall

his young body was the lifesaving shield

Rhythms moved the strange fruit

Rhythms bruised the strange fruit

drums were beating on Sunday August 7, 2011

when 6 year-old Arianna Gibson

missed church and went straight to heaven

One year later

Spring gets leaped by Chicago’s coldest winter ever

March 17, 2012

around 3:40 p.m.

6 year-old Aliyah Shell was gun down

in Little Village not Wounded Knee

Little Aliyah was killed in urban combat

in a war she did not enlist to fight

Oh say can you see the last weekend of Winter

Yaw don’t know the Seasons

that’s the reason at least 10 died

at least 40 were wounded

yes there were some knees

The beats make me think

The drums keep beating

Sunday February 26, 2012

a mother and father’s lives became twisted hells

when their son, Trayvon Martin’s heart stopped beating

The beats make me think

The drums keep beating

Winter 2013

fifteen year-old   marched

D.C Presidential Inauguration Celebration

Then Hadiya and college prep high school classmates

sought sanctuary from rain, test-ings

and career future prepping

unaware that they were stepping

into the undeclared war

rattled and ran

but Hadiya fell from shots fired

her hopes and future expired

Rhythms moved the strange fruit

Rhythms bruised the strange fruit

February 9, 2013

I heard Mothers cry

drowned in tears

as my eyes saw her young years

like Mrs. Mamie Till-Mobley’s son Emmett

her presence in that casket

represented too many lost young lives and dreams

The beats make me think

the drums keep beating

Winter of 2013

got even colder

as the streets became bolder

and took six Sons from two Mothers

The beats make me think

the drums keep beating

Rhythms moved the strange fruit

Rhythms bruised the strange fruit

Winter 2014

the drums were beating in Omaha, Nebraska

for 5 year –old Peyton Benson

snatched from the planet while eating cereal

No this is not a movie serial

and this it not a  dream sequel

5 year-old Peyton was my childhood friend’s Granddaughter

The beats make me think

the drums keep beating

Chicago September 2015

can't  escape

this un-dream

almost my birthday

shots fired

shots fired

shots fired

Grandmother

Daughter

Child in Mother’s womb

erased and human lives expired

11 months young baby

escaped with a gunshot wound

We have to find some space on dry land

from sea to not so shiny

The beats make me think

the drums keep beating

The beats make me think

the drums keep beating

That same Ole beat again

moved Mrs. Mamie Till-Mobley’s

14-year-old son to the Tallahatchie River

Rhythms moved the strange fruit

Rhythms bruised the strange fruit

BEAT THE DRUMS FOR ALL OF THEM!!!

Elbert Tavon Briggs was born 1952 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, raised in Omaha, Nebraska. Elbert studied at Northeastern Illinois University and currently resides in Chicago, Illinois.. Currently creating with the Randolph Street Poets @ the Chicago Cultural Center and workshopping with Poets & Patrons. This poem reflects his lifelong commitment to incorporate poetry, music, art, dance, and drama, to give voice to the voiceless. Elbert graduated from Arizona State University and served two years in AmeriCorps fighting the war on poverty in the Lower Delta.

EMMETT TILL'S CORPSE TURNS SIXTY

by Philip C. Kolin

from Jet Magazine, September 15, 1955 via JetCityOrange.

Sixty years ago today
I started my life as a corpse,
the corpus indelicti of
America the Mournful.
I am sure you have caught me
on the tv, in newspapers,  or over the net.
Ten presidents since Generalissimo Ike
have taken my Jet photo
out of their Oval Office drawers
every time America has a nightmare
about whether black lives matter
and prayed  it would never come to this.
You may have caught me
in the  faces of black boys
whose smiles have turned to pus
because of police  clubs or stray
gangland bullets .
You could have seen  me, too,
in crowds demanding  justice
for Rodney King, Trayvon Martin
or Eric Garner. Did you hear me
in a  recent poetry slam on YouTube
protesting the death of a black man
or boy every 28 hours in a Second
Amendment America where violence
has gone through the roof?
You may have also  picked me out
weeping on CNN or Fox
when the Mother Emanuel Six
were laid to rest and
the state  flag came down
in South Carolina
and all the peckerwoods
could do about it  was whistle Dixie.
I plan to be at the Smithsonian
next year when they unveil my coffin.
Hope it does not debut on August 28th.
I am not sure America has enough tears left
for me and the ravages of Katrina.


Philip Kolin is the  University Distinguished Professor at the University of Southern Mississippi where he also edits  the  Southern Quarterly. He has published more than 40 books on Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, African American playwrights as well as  seven collections of poems. His most recent book  is Emmett Till in Different States: A Collection of Poems forthcoming in November from Third World Press.

1955

by Philip C. Kolin
 
 

Emmett Till
(July 25, 1941 – August 28, 1955)

A year of fantasies, allowed sorcery--
Disneyland opens in Anaheim

Throngs flock to inhabit inflatable kingdoms
America thrives in this the year of the rat

The Mickey Mouse Club enrolls millions;
ears big as Eisenhower's listen but

School children killed by a freight train
in Spring City, TN could not hear the whistle.

Elvis makes his first appearance, half
of him seen on Ed Sullivan, the other

Half below the blackened screen
girls riot at his concert in Jacksonville

Thrown into menarche--
"Bye, bye, babies," sings the King.

Mourners queue around James Dean
tears for a rebel hero whose monument

Is air conditioned. Theatres feature
animated dogs and travelogues.

Gunsmoke premieres and so does
the Viet Nam War staring Ho Chi Minh.

Race becomes a sidebar topic
little Claudette Colvin refuses

To give up her seat on a Montgomery
bus; she is cuffed and carried off backwards.

Segregation is outlawed on trains
and Greyhounds traveling interstate

Routes end with clubs and thugs
stamping black faces with welts.

Eisenhower suffers a coronary
thrombosis. McDonald's opens

Its first golden arches
GM makes a billion in profits.

On Emmett Till's murder day
millions tune in

Sudden death
football--Rams defeat the Giants.

Later, Emmett waits for resurrection in the Tallahatchie
America puts In God We Trust on money.


Philip C. Kolin, University Distinguished Professor in the College of Arts and Letters at the University of Southern Mississippi, is the editor of The Southern Quarterly and has published more than 30 scholarly books on African American playwrights, Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, and Edward Albee. Also a poet, Kolin has published five books of poems, the most recent being Reading God's Handwriting: Poems (Kaufmann, 2012), as well as hundreds of poems in such journals as the Michigan Quarterly Review, Louisiana Literature, South Carolina Review, Christian Century, Spiritus, Seminary Ridge Review, America, and has co-edited Hurricane Blues: Poems about Katrina and Rita (Southwest Missouri UP, 2006) with Susan Swartwout.