JUST A COOKOUT WITHOUT HISTORY

a glosa with a nod to Jemar Tisby 

by Rachel Landrum Crumble

AI graphic created by Nightcafé for The New Verse News

You whom I could not save
Listen to me.   
Try to understand this simple speech as I would be ashamed of another.   
I swear, there is in me no wizardry of words.   
—Czeslaw Milosz from "Dedication"

If I could write history with sparklers
in the newly dark air, light cherry bombs of truth, send bottle rockets
of lament to arc the unbelieving sky,

the sky that says: "Not this again!

​​Can't we just have a nice family meal without politics?"​
​​​I wonder, "Whose politics?" For the sake of 'peace', I cave.

​"The hotdogs are ready. Who wants a hamburger?

​Let's give thanks for the Founding Fathers' faith."
​​​If God is holy, why did they enslave?
​​You whom I could not save.

​​​I'm still the youngest, so experience doesn't count

​​​though I've been married to a Black man for forty-five years.
​​What about 300 years of slavery?
​​Then decades of terror and Jim Crow?
​​Where does all that sorrow and anger go?

​​​It bleeds into the bank accounts of Industry.

​​​Broken Black and brown bodies pave the way.
"Now that's all behind us. Our future is bright."​
​​​"Yeah, for the land of the rich where some arefree."

​​Listen to me.

​​Silenced by inattention, 

​​I am again the youngest at the family table.

"Did anyone bring that peach cobbler I crave?"​

​​Why blame the victims with a little wave   
​​so the flies of understanding never find landing?

A voice canonizes the Founding Fathers--it's my brother.
​​​Most were slave holders, 

​​​who wrote that "all men were created equal."
​My siblings channel the politics of my blue-blood mother,
​Try to understand this simple speech as I would be ashamed of another.

​By now, I'd settle for cap-gun sparks of recognition. 
​My husband, veteran of fireworks, stayed home from this failed mission. 
​He is a tired conscientious objector in this war.
​Weary of the White noise of indifference, my grown children won't engage.
​​I write with sparklers, but I need a torch.
"Fireworks are beautiful, but they kill birds."

Land of the free. ​But how free, and who are 'we'?"
Heads together, they discuss the State of Things.

​​I love them, but this feels absurd. 

​I swear, there is in me no wizardry of words. 

Rachel Landrum Crumble 

is a life-long poet and a retired teacher. She has published in The Porter House Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Common Ground Review, among others. Sister Sorrow (2022 Finishing Line Press) is her first book of poetry. Her second is In Praise of Detours (2025 Main Street Rag). She is working on a novel. She lives with her husband of 45 years, a jazz drummer. Find her on http://substack.com/rachellandrumcrumble or at poetteachermom.com.

BOOING BOSS TWEET’S CRUEL REICH CULT WHEREVER THEY GO

by Raymond Nat Turner

Rise Up, Sing Out: Watch from Home

The boos are growing stronger 

The boos are lasting longer…

Crescendoing class-war bugle calls—

thundering tsunamis—

from factory floors, from stadiums, from arenas, from 

concert halls, bouncing off white supremacist border walls

The boos are growing stronger 

The boos are lasting longer…

Lions and elephants roaring, rejecting orange ICE Age rampage. Rejecting bassackwards 

Wayback Machine Making America Grate again. Splitting families up in profit-driven 

torture centers. Rejecting double-dipping, rights-stripping, grifting, gerrymandered Jim Crow

$campaigns and $elections turning our sweat beads, blisters, callouses into their personal ATMs.

The boos are growing stronger 

The boos are lasting longer…

Background vocals for SNAP songs stolen from babies’ growling bellies.

Harmonies for cancer patients’ plug-pulling laments

and dirges of screaming farmers fucked by their Tariff Sheriff arresting

our development at 2 bags of groceries for the price of 6…

The boos are growing stronger 

The boos are lasting longer…

Foghorns warning fishing boats ‘bout mass murder on high seas and 

War Of The Week. Warning of walking waste, fraud and abuse by 

2,000 lb. bomb-worshippers—

Department of Class War on working-class—home and abroad.

The boos are growing stronger 

The boos are lasting longer…

Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet; Black Agenda Report's Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC.

DIRGE FOR AMERICANS

by Greg Friedman 

shoot first 

lie after 

 

They came in search of virgin 

land but found earth who was 

mother, sky who was father 

to those who walked on, under, 

in harmonies unknown across 

oceans. Unaware in the grasping. 

 

shoot first 

lie after 

 

They told us the stories: patriots 

of liberating pine trees and snakes 

un-tread-upon, wresting liberty  

from plough-wielding hands and  

chained feet brought unwilling, 

un-asked-for to bondage. 

 

shoot first, 

lie after 

 

We learned the lie, detonate it 

annually with fanfare and fire, 

touting tricornered hats and parchment 

promises which excluded souls 

with hypocrisy’s math which 

wove the original sin into 

the flag-fabric of a nation. 

 

shoot first 

lie after 

 

Even the taciturn words of Lincoln, 

mixing the knife-edged speeches of 

Douglass, passed into shades on blood- 

lands, and twisted into stone idols of 

Lee and Jackson, while newer  

promises stonewalled freedom. 

 

shoot first 

lie after 

 

Riders of terror hiding under white  

in black nights un-re-constructed 

the fragile facades of freedmen’s 

bureaus and the warrior-president, 

while carpetbags carried the poisons  

of our Adam’s choices, the apple  

eaten once and choking, choking us still. 

 

shoot first 

lie after 

 

They marched, some walked into water- 

cannon resistance, some earned ropes 

others bullets. But a people progressed, 

overcame, would not be moved until law 

moved and protections etched on stones 

hewn from prophets’ preaching. Alas, 

though, alas, the original grasp of  

the banned fruit reached again to 

roll back black tides of truth, un- 

write the engraved securities and 

spread denial with ballots and faces 

shrouded lest we see hate’s true faces. 

 

Shoot first 

lie after 

 

What mirrors can poets hold up  

to who we are, the maga-faces of 

us, masked and armed with original 

animosity, that snake-fed wish for 

the knowledge of evil without good, 

the forbidden fruit of persistent 

preferences, potent with orange truths, 

to contrive, convince what eyes saw, 

not innocence—but what hate reshapes. 

 

shoot first 

lie after 

 

Our weak words gain spirit in gathered 

places of open and zoomed assemblies 

of naming, crafted calls for hands to 

join and more voices to move between 

the guns and the victims, recognize 

the lies as they spew like Connor’s 

cannons to push us off the streets 

of spoken truths. We speak first, 

second, third and always,  

after  

and until. 

Greg Friedman is a Franciscan priest, author and poet, currently living in Rome, Italy. 

THE INHERITANCE

by Jim Bellanca

Gainesville, Georgia, 2020 (Shutterstock)

Jim Crow’s obituary read,

“After a lengthy illness, Jim has passed away,

His Crow name now just history.” 

I thought “maybe not, maybe so.”

(You cannot trust the news these days.)

 

I knew Jim’s sister Jane had moved to Toronto

with her DACA son Juan

a surprise, a ten-year caboose

behind three sisters college gone,

had joined the family late.

Juan Crow was the most interesting one,

a son who’d volunteered for war, 

three tours in Afghanistan’s battle fields,

a Silver Cross and long times spent from love.

Back home, a hero named, he learned again, 

(most definitely not his first experience),

the curse of Jim Crow’s name, 

with his life separated by skin

in school,

        —at water fountains

        —on school bus ride

        —in restaurants

        —in restrooms

        —in voting booths

        —in marriage beds

the profile depicting all brown men

as one no matter where or who or when

ICE labeled shady caricatures,  

        —“beaner”

        —“wetback”

        —“gringo”​

        —“spic”

who tequila too much, siesta too long, 

just “don’t belong” on our turf;

accused of job stealing, rape, and more, 

tattooed as M-13,

by Presidential decree,

      —“the worst of hombres”

      —“the most detestable of human beings”

      —“the lowest despicable animal beast”

      —“a greaser druggy poisoning our lands”

any excuse the man can name

while hooded fiends from ICE 

day-quota-sized kidnapping any brown man

      —in church or school  

      —in hospital bed

      —in shopping mall

      —in strawberry fields 

      —in pizza huts

all blared and shared in local tv news, 

dread images bent with bowed shaved heads, 

arms tattoed with criminal marks

slow marched to caged jail cells,

(no one knows where)

—to scare the most innocent

—to leave their family love 

—to end their journey to freedom’s land

—to prove the power of the President

            by breaking what laws, he wished.

 

Juan Crow’s red blood

once given to save the land, the nation he loved,

no longer flows free. Juan sits in Alcatraz,

in his separate unequal cell

all son and martyr and hero dream

of Jim Crow newborn, a cosmic transfer,

a heritage inherited without recourse

Jim’s curse transferred to Juan, 

a lifetime injustice to bare, 

all ball and chain and prison wrack, 

all Sisyphus rock on his back.

Jim Bellanca, former English teacher, publisher and gadfly, now a late blooming poet, favors paining memory images about nature, family, peace, social justice and wry comments about senior life. He fervently assumes a “No Prufrock I” position when he writes about social injustice. More than two dozen poetry journals including Witcraft, Write City zine, Aerial Journey. Down In the Dirt, Sparks of Caliope, Westwood Quarterly, The Lyric, and East on Central have published his poems.