THE MOURNING AFTER

by Nan Ottenritter

Detail of Kehinde Wiley's "Rumors of War"

Drive downtown, in the circles can be found
Stonewall Jackson, Arthur Ashe in Monument town.
Two hooves in the air mean the rider died in battle,
Others want their freedom, don’t make me no chattle.
The history society debunks the horse limbs lore
But slavery, Lost Causes leave generations sore
and hurting from a war and the endless chore
of teaching you, the victor, writing the stor-
ies, the history, the truth of our nation.

On the block in Shockoe Bottom, bound in chains
Or, cause cotton weren’t the only crop, sold down the James.
We scrawl on Jeff Davis Black Lives Matter.
At Robert E. Lee’s feet red paint is splattered.
Say his name. Lynch Trump. This is racist.
Your vote was a hate crime. The south ain’t no oasis.

Yet near Monument Avenue a black man rides,
Nike high tops astride a horse with one foot high.
Pony-tailed dreadlocks, rips in his jeans,
Wounded in the battle of his own life it seems.
Yet regard his hoodied shoulders, straight and proud.
Regard his youth, his gaze, his head unbowed.
Wiley brought him here to Arthur Ashe Boulevard.
The statue sits right here, in Richmond unmarred
the painful mourning after in our own backyard.

Nan Ottenritter lives in Richmond, VA and has driven by the confederate statues for years. Yet in February, 2019 the city council voted to change the name of the Boulevard to Arthur Ashe Boulevard. In December, 2019 Kehinde Wiley’s statue Rumors of War was installed in front of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. It stands in stark comparison to the statues on Monument Avenue. With both of these actions the author began to feel a little proud of what was once the capitol of the Confederacy.

AMERICAN HISTORY X REVISITED

by Alan Catlin





He was the self-proclaimed
president of the United States
of the Stupid.  Alt-Right Fight
Club pioneer made famous/
gone viral, for punching out
a 95 pound woman with a
Love Trumps Hate sign.
Directed the dragging of a black
man to a parking garage to be
beaten by cowards with face masks.
All the better not to see you.
Not to provide that all important
positive ID.
Has tattooed 88 on the backs of
both hands, numbers that represent
the letter H as in the phrase
Heil Hitler.
Exhorts others to Join or Die at
rallies in places like Charlottesville.
Buys a brace of tiki lights for hate
parades around statues of traitors
and riot shields for get-togethers
after rallies where things often are
wet and wild and totally out of
control.
Is Extreme everything: right wing,
radicalized, white hood wearing
and proud of it.
Brings guns to a peace rally in case
Grannies Against the War go rogue
and attack: “The only good gray panther
is a dead one.”
Thinks the Four Horsemen of
the Apocalypse are: Robert Lee, Jeff Davis,
Stonewall Jackson and Bedford Forrest.
Says the Civil War has just begun.
May even have been the guy who
fired the first shot.


Alan Catlin is poetry editor of online journal misfitmagazine.net. His latest book of poetry is American Odyssey from Future Cycle Press.

EVERY TREE WITH NO BODY HANGING

by David Oates

Every tree with no body hanging from it
every single one,

Georgian trees, thousands of them, an earthbound cloud layer
I see from above, flying in here where I've returned for reasons, reasons,
but then a walk down among them in Piedmont Park, ruminative
(I was here decades ago, with my secret wounds, my pretending
to be straight, to be smart),

all these trees here in the midst of  moneymaking Atlanta,
and likewise out at Stone Mountain where barbeque grilles
come in pickup trucks to be with Robert E. Lee,
and trees far up in the hiking woods where no one goes,
and beside the coming and going parking places on Peachtree
with the peopled sidewalk always near,
and trees in gazebo lawn jockey suburban yards without end,

and I can't stop thinking of it, what's happened here
and what's happened so many places, Jeff Davis, Strom Thurmond, Pol Pot,
the bodies hanging, that Wyoming boy barb-wired,
everywhere really, Indians hunted down for sport
Yana Modoc Paiute Cherokee Calapooya Chinook,
and death lasering down from American planes as I write this
and I wonder what's the use, what's the use,
but then I realize

every tree I see with no body hanging from it
is some kind of victory. Every single one.

* * *

Every single tree without a body hanging
means that we're winning.

Because every tree breathes your name, so quiet you might miss it:
sunlight soaking into the cells, each photon
delivering its stellar news of awakening
to its one mild microscopic green willingness;
and the friendly air circulating
leaf by leaf along serrated edge and over tiny hair and bump and vein                                                                  
in such precision of making as cannot be stopped,
each molecule greeting the exact membrane,
breath and breathing, every moment
a million million tender to enter and leave.

Thugs and armed men have no idea.
They make wars, they hang a few or send bullets through them.
Their subtractions are puny. Their idea is puny. They thrust
and steal elections and congratulate each other.
They cannot undo the rest of us. Our idea is big.
We are always winning.

Forests of this idea grow everywhere and they keep busy
remembering it day and night: yes they do: in
cities and suburbs and freeway medians
jungles scrubs heaths chaparrals woodlots copses spinneys
a memorial world unfolding life, life, life.

The killers can only kill. We are making, making, and we cannot be stopped.

We need to remember this.
We are winning.
Every breath is the victory
and every tree -- every single one -- the promise of it.


David Oates writes about nature and urban life from Portland, Oregon. His poetry has won awards (Badonnah Award from Bitterroot Poetry, finalist for Pablo Neruda Long Poem Award from Nimrod), and appeared in many places including Poetry/LA, Yellow Silk, ISLE, Fireweed, Windfall, and California Poetry Quarterly.  His book Peace in Exile: Poems was published by Oyster River Press. He is also author of four books of nonfiction, including Paradise Wild: Reimagining American Nature from Oregon State University Press. He was Kittredge Distinguished Visiting Writer at the University of Montana in 2012. Oates won first place for essay from Northern Colorado Writers in August of 2014, and a Pushcart nomination. Currently his poetry and prose are being featured in the German literary magazine Wortschau in English and German. He leads the Wild Writers Seminars in Portland, and teaches workshops and graduate classes in the United States and Europe.