EDMUND PETTIS BRIDGE 2025

by Jim Burns

For John Lewis, 1940-2020

Bloody Sunday, Bloody Sunday,
we looked away this year,
and now its gone, but…

The spirits waft out of the fog
on nights moist and sultry
as sweet summer sex
and meet at the bridge 
they can’t forget.
See them now,
John Lewis, Hosea Williams,
alive again and young,
Moseses leading their people
across the Red Sea
to the Promised Land,
leading 1200 moving feet
across the Alabama River,
a moccasin 
cold and poisonous
glistening in the moonlight 
below those 1200 feet marching
to the other side,
the other side where
their tormentors,
cold and poisonous too,
wait in the mist,
spectral figures,
mean-faced troopers with billies
and rearing horses with bulging eyes,
waiting to make this Judgment Day.
Why do these phantoms gather 
to cry again
from the sting of gas
as if their tears hadn’t fallen
for centuries before,
to bleed again
as if they had never bled
from the crack of batons
across heads bowed in prayer?
They climb up from their graves
until someday they reach
that other side.

Jim Burns was born and raised in rural Indiana and spent most of his working life as a librarian. Now retired, he turned to a long held interest in writing, and has had poems published by Eucalyptus Review, Skipjack Review, Rainy Weather Days, and others. He lives with wife and dog in Jacksonville, Florida.

REDEEM THE SOUL OF OUR NATION

an erasure/found poem

by Joanne Kennedy Frazer

from John Lewis’s essay published in The New York Times on the day of his funeral 

Motivated by human compassion,
set aside race, class, age, 
language and nationality
to demand respect for human dignity.
 
Democracy is not a state.
It is an act.
 
Build the Beloved Community,
a nation and world society 
at peace with itself.
 
The vote is the most powerful 
nonviolent change agent 
in a democratic society.
 
We are all complicit 
when we tolerate injustice.
 
Each of us has a moral obligation
to stand up, speak up 
and speak out.
 
Redeem the soul of America 
by getting in good trouble, 
necessary trouble
 
Let freedom ring.
 
Walk with the wind,
brothers and sisters
 
Let the spirit of peace
and the power of everlasting love
be your guide.

Joanne Kennedy Frazer, a retired peace and justice director and educator for faith-based organizations, is a third-act-of-life poet. She enjoys writing on issues of justice, the natural world and spirituality. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies, journals and e-zines. Her second chapbook Seasonings (Kelsay Press), will be published in early 2023. She lives in Durham, NC.

WATCHING A WASP THE DAY AFTER JOHN LEWIS'S FUNERAL

by Linda Gelbrich

A small yellowjacket joins me
at the patio table this morning,
absorbed in the pinch of sausage
I set aside on the tablecloth
a short distance away.

It wraps its body
halfway around the morsel,
its legs and jaw clamped on,
and the sausage begins to roll
toward the table edge.
I stop the rolling with my notebook.
The wasp hangs on.

The second time it rolls to the edge
both fall to the deck,
and the wasp hangs on
until it bites off a small piece,
flies away, then returns for more.

All this happens
while I finish breakfast,
get out my pen and begin to write,
wondering if I, too, could be
so absorbed in anything
that I’d keep on with my work
no matter who or what
sat near me,

no matter the rolling and falling
that surely would happen,
that I’d keep on, even
if bruised and battered,
that I’d want something so much
I could not be deterred,
would not give up,
as long
as I still
had breath.

Linda Gelbrich is a retired Clinical Social Worker and adult educator living in Western Oregon.   Her poems have been published in numerous anthologies, on notecards she creates, and in chapbooks.  Her spiritual reflections have been published in books of daily readings.

LISTENING TO JOHN LEWIS’S FUNERAL

by Penelope Scambly Schott

Yes, the singing, the speakers,

relatives, co-workers, mayor,

yes, three former presidents

(though not the racist-in-office),

their memories, tributes, praise,

but today it was the audience

in the Ebenezer Baptist Church,

that place sanctified by history,

how we, listening on the radio

to the speeches and applause,

could also hear people breathe

and hold their breaths, call out,

respond, agree, speak it aloud.

Say it, brother. Say it, sister. Amen.

Penelope Scambly Schott is a past recipient of the Oregon Book Award for Poetry. Recent books are House of the Cardamom Seed  and November Quilt.  Forthcoming is On Dufur Hill, a sequence of poems about a small (pop. 623) wheat-growing town in central Oregon.

IT IS DIFFERENT IT IS NOT DIFFERENT

by Sarah Sarai

32 mug shots of
Freedom Riders

arrested 24 May
1961 and jailed

Jackson
Mississippi.

John Lewis is
third from right

top row.
CT Vivian second

row
second from left.

In
Louisville KY

435 mug shots
of

as many protestors
jailed

saying her
name

(Breonna
Taylor)

are not yet
released.

Add 400
more

Freedom Riders.
I can’t

find them
all,

those
solid of will.

Sarah Sarai’s poems are in DMQ Review, The Southampton Review, E-Ratio, and others. Her second full-length collection is That Strapless Bra in Heaven (Kelsay Books). She lives in New York.