TWO SIDES TO KENOSHA

by David Southward

Officer Sheskey feared for his life;

thinking that Jacob clutched a knife,

he shot, shot, shot in self-defense,

assured of his own innocence.

No charge was brought: who would convict

a fear too sane to contradict,

when video (which carries clout)

leaves wiggle room for reasoned doubt?

Jacob also feared for his life;

seeing the gunmen, he knew his knife 

would prove no use in self-defense.

He knew no black man’s innocence

is ever presumed, that courts convict 

the captured, suavely contradict

their stories, summon legal clout

to silence them with reasoned doubt.

 

 

David Southward teaches in the Honors College at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is the author of Apocrypha (Wipf & Stock 2018) and Bachelor’s Buttons (Kelsay Books 2020), and winner of the 2019 Frost Farm Prize for Metrical Poetry.

THE OLD FACE WE SAW

by Ryan Schaufler

AP Photo, 1956

Jacob Blake is not dead, yet.
The 7 bullets tried to kill him.

He’s just paralyzed from the waist down
Chained to a hospital bed.

Guns don’t kill people
People kill people.

Police are people.
Police tried to do what they do:

Kill a black man by shooting him in the back,
Where they normally kneel on a neck.

They feared for their lives.
They feared for their lives.

August 29th. 2020.
The Black Panther is dead.

The year has knocked the wind out of us.
My wife & I decided to take a walk.

We drove to Port Washington.
We had lived there happily for 9 years.

That was before T***p.
Before a 17 year old thug from Antioch

Drove to our state with an AR-15
The good ole Smith and Wesson

30-round magazine loaded & ready
Protecting businesses, right?

Protecting the right to kill two & maim one.
Just like a video game. Hands up & walk away.

“Need a bottle of water?” I know you’re thirsty!
For blood. “We appreciate you!” White supremacy.

Recorded for posterity:
The voice of police.

Armored vehicles pass by
The privilege of a white boy with a big long gun

Survives
As the crowd pleads: He shot them! He killed them!

They feared for their lives.
They feared for their lives.

We lived here before all of this.
Before the plague.

Port Washington isn’t the same now.
The country is not the same now.

None of us are now. We walked by the lake.
75 degrees. Blue sky. The moon, peeking.

A playground. Deer in the distance, peeking.
The lake breeze reveals the stillness of rage.

White People frolicking under the sun.
Away from Milwaukee or Kenosha.

A Truck pulls up behind us.
Us. A white man. With his Black wife.

Truck. filled with boys. that look like
Kyle Rittenhouse. Glassy eyed. Smiling

Crooked. They slow down
Their heads out the window.

Their faces mirror the gleeful hate
60 years ago

As white pro-segregationists
Battered the bones of Freedom Riders.

Demonic smirks directed our way
A familiar evil. Just as familiar as the beautiful park

We walked. Our eyes connect.
“Boo!” A boy shouts. His face

Cold, hardened with ignorance
Smoldering with hatred. He blows a kiss

Flipping us off. I respond, instinctually, “Boo.”
Blowing a kiss back. I do not flip him off.

My wife quickly whispers to me,
“Stop. Don’t engage.”

She instructs me to cut across the park.
Away from the truck. They fit the profile.

Internet militia gang. Radicalized. White.
Militant. Seeking blood. An uncivilized war.

“You got to listen to me. They don’t see you.
They see me. You can’t respond like you want.”

She’s right. I can’t see clearly. Their rage
Enrages me. My white privilege doesn’t work here.

White people continue to picnic and laugh
Unaware of the terror. We keep our eye on the truck

As it slowly cruises the park. Are they armed?
Will they stop? Will they canvas the area with AR-15’s?

We did not call the police.
We could not call the police.

Will they shoot us for existing? They have been incited.
Trump has released the underbelly of America.

We feared for our lives.
We feared for our lives.


Ryan Schaufler lives in Milwaukee and received a BFA from California Institute of the Arts in Acting. He is a professional actor, special education teacher, theatre teacher, playwright, director, photographer, artist, and a father. His plays and poetry have been published in such journals as Southern Indiana Review, Rise Up Review, and Clockhouse. His photography can be seen in Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, Elizabeth Horan’s 2019 Chapbook Fem Box, Moonchild Magazine, Pithead Chapel, Riggwelter, The Perch, and Cream City Review among others. @schauflerized

FOR JACOB BLAKE

SHOT BY A COP, PARALYZED, AND SHACKLED TO A HOSPITAL BED


by Margaret Rozga

As Jacob Blake was freed from handcuffs in the hospital, the Kenosha police union said Friday that Blake put an officer in a headlock moments before being shot in the back. Since Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, was shot seven times in the back by a White officer, local officials have not discussed many details citing the ongoing investigation led by state investigators.

On Friday, the Kenosha Professional Police Association took issue with the public narrative, saying that he confronted officers, put an officer in a headlock and carried a knife that he refused to drop when ordered to by police, the union said. For Blake's attorneys, the police union's narrative is merely a tactic to justify the officers' actions. "I think it's the common strategy that police departments use in these type of circumstances. It's always trying to justify murder for misdemeanors," attorney B'Ivory LaMarr told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Friday. —CNN, August 29, 2020

Who made the decision to shackle him?
Who shackled him?
Who is the nurse who cares for him shackled?
Who is the doctor who does the surgery? Surgeries?
Was he shackled during surgery?

They did not say shackle. They said restrained.

What words minimize, hide, disguise, mask:
who uses words like this?
What words for this?

His father said handcuffed, handcuffed to the bed.
His father’s words leave the bedside, leave
the hospital, hit the air, hit the air waves,
hit the heart, cry out for release, cry for justice,
words that restrain other words, words that free.

Still to be told:
the nurse’s story, the nurses’ stories
the doctor’s,  the doctors’.

The decider, the deciders, hold a press conference,
are pressed. Pressed, they leave. They leave questions
opening like unacknowledged wounds,
lingering like ghosts of the dead they cannot shackle.

Margaret Rozga is the current Wisconsin Poet Laureate.  She writes poems from her ongoing concern for social justice.

JACOB IN KENOSHA

by Marilyn Peretti






 Now it’s Jacob

and his little boys
    saw it all
    from the back seat
the 7 shots
    to their Daddy’s back
as he got into the car

7 shots
    into the lifeline
    his spine
and he cannot walk

Now it’s Jacob

Whose Daddy will it be
    next week?


Marilyn Peretti, poet near Chicago, dreads the news every day.

SEVEN BACK BITING BULLETS

by Peter Witt

Bullet One—man trying to open a car door
so he can bring comfort to his children

Bullet Two—cell phones record the images
in disbelief

Bullet Three—kids are in the car,
wondering why their daddy
is lying on the ground, not moving

Bullet Four—policemen coordinate their stories
so that what we see with our eyes
are simply alternative facts to truth

Bullet Five—nights of social unrest
turn to violence, Fox news
preaches law and order

Bullet Six—late night hosts mock police
with not so subtle jabs at their
let's wait to see the facts excuses

Bullet Seven—fathers have another discussion
with their black sons about how to survive
another day in a dying while black world


Peter Witt lives in Texas, writes poetry about a variety of topics including issues of social justice.