JULY NIGHT AFTER THE SHOT AT TRUMP

by Tricia Knoll

I open a fortune cookie with my take-out 
egg fu young from Men at Wok. No fortune. 
 
Fewer fireflies than last week light up
this humid July night.
 
The grass needs mowing. Jewel weed
takes over the woods.
 
The first bitternut hickory falls from
the trees looming over my skylights. 
 
My shy dog flinches like the nut
is a bullet aimed at her easy life. 
 
I read a list of assassinations.
Kids learned about Lincoln.
 
I remember Kennedys, King,
and Milk. One King, a Mayor,
 
of Mt Pleasant, Iowa shot
when a citizen’s sewage backed up. 
 
Of course, the gun was an AR 15, 
what the  NRA calls America’s gun.
 
A long night unrolls with drips
of information. The names of the dead
 
withheld. Lamentations in the fairground
field. Endless replays of a bloody ear. 
 
I swat at the mosquito buzzing in mine. 

Tricia Knoll is a Vermont poet old enough to vividly remember the shooting of President Kennedy announced to her high school over a public address system while she took a French test. Her most recent chapbook The Unknown Daughter contains persona poems linked to reactions in a community that houses the Tomb of the Unknown Daughter.

TOO LATE FOR ROSES

by Gifford Savage

If Sinéad was here she would call out the fakery, 
false flattery, fickle bleeding-heart eulogies.
See straight through the fawning hypocrisy.
Where were we all when she needed us to stand 
with her, for her, beside her?
When Sinatra and the old guard condemned her,
and the self-styled Madonna spurned her?
What did you say when Dylan fans booed her in ’92, 

did you speak out then?
Dylan fans, though, have a history 
of resisting the winds of change.
Perhaps the hopes and dreams of a generation
died along with JFK—
or were buried at the Lorraine Hotel
in Memphis Tennessee?
Maybe this slight figure with the voice of an angel
was an unwelcome reminder,
that they’d sold out to ‘The Man’ in the end?
But those Dylan fans are no different from all the rest.
A crowd, of course, is untameable, unpredictable.
Hailing heroes one moment,
only to crucify them the next
then declare their undying love for the dead.
She would have hated the herd mentality,
for she walked the narrow road
through stones that never broke her bones,
but surely pierced her hurting heart.
So we assuage our guilt or jump the bandwagon
with our social-media posts of googled facts,
our YouTube shares
our limpid lamentations.
We didn’t deserve her—any of us.
But we mourn and miss her
this fragile lioness of truth.
Too late now to tell her she is loved,
to leave futile bouquets of flowers.
She can no longer hear us.
But we need more than ever, to listen to her.

Gifford Savage is from Bangor, Northern Ireland. His poetry has appeared in a number of journals including The Storms, The Bangor Literary Journal, Agape Review, and previously in The New Verse News. He won the Aspects Festival Poetry Slam 2022.

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.

WHEN I WAS A CHILD, I SPOKE LIKE A CHILD . . .

by Marsha Owens

When did he have an epiphany? she asked
unclear about how one is racist and then is not.

I know how life meanders, doesn’t march
in straight lines like VMI cadets stepping
around Stonewall Jackson’s horse, its body
stained with white and black blood before it
was stuffed and saluted, forever revered.

Her name was LaVinia, her body stout,
her words few, her work for my Mama—
clean toilets and stiffly pressed sheets,
her days long, two bus rides from Richmond
to the freshly coifed suburbs, all-white.

I didn’t know why LaVinia fixed sandwiches
for my brother and me but none for herself.

His name was Pete, lanky and dark, head bowed
to say, Mornin’ Ma’am to my Mama, Mornin’ Missy
to me, a five-year-old. His work for my Daddy—
boards nailed, shingles hauled up the ladder, laid
out just so—a few dollars at day’s end.

I didn’t know why Pete sat outside on the stoop
at lunchtime, eating his hot dog on a paper plate.

I swam in the culture into which I was born,
1950s, somewhere between slavery’s end
and the Act called Civil Rights.

I stumbled with other white people away
from horrible injustices and strode towards
desegregated neighborhoods, integrated schools,
JFK, MLK, Trayvon Martin, President Obama.

I listened and learned, read and reflected,
laughed and cried with new friends whose
memories were not mine, nor mine theirs.
No epiphany, just life. And I voted

“for the person who cares about all people,”
Daddy said in his old age, simplistic political
advice that had evolved over a lifetime
and became the politics I chose to follow.

Marsha Owens is a retired educator who still lives and writes in Richmond, VA. She voted for Ralph Northam and Mark Herring, not because they are perfect, but because their policies support "all people."

WISDOM TAKES A HOLIDAY

On T***p’s Withdrawal from the Climate Agreement

by Jon Wesick

Lincoln plants cotton on the White House lawn.
Rachel Carson sprays Agent Orange.
Martin Luther King hoists the confederate flag.
Gandhi stops at a steakhouse
on his way to the shooting range.

Crick and Watson blow their Nobel Prize money
on swizzle sticks and lotto tickets.
Jacques Cousteau moves to Arizona.
Einstein downs a six-pack of PBR
before getting behind the wheel of his GTO.
Jonas Salk shares dirty needles in Haitian crack houses.

Picasso enters his finger-painting period.
Mozart releases his 99 Bottles of Beer Symphony.
e.e. cummings WRITES IN CAPITAL LETTERS.
Julia Child dazzles guests with beef jerky à l’orange.
Dave Brubeck and McCoy Tyner embark
on their International Chopsticks Tour.

Stephen Hawking competes
in the Ultimate Fighting Challenge.
Bobby Fischer takes up checkers.
Elon Musk trades space flight and electric cars
for Pez dispensers. Warren Buffet
wires money to an exiled Nigerian prince.
Jean Paul Sartre guest stars
on Jackass.

Jon Wesick is a regional editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual. He’s published hundreds of poems and stories in journals such as the Atlanta Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, Metal Scratches, Pearl, Slipstream, Space and Time, Tales of the Talisman, and Zahir. The editors of Knot Magazine nominated his story “The Visitor” for a Pushcart Prize. His poem “Meditation Instruction” won the Editor’s Choice Award in the 2016 Spirit First Contest. Another poem “Bread and Circuses” won second place in the 2007 African American Writers and Artists Contest. Jon is the author of the poetry collection Words of Power, Dances of Freedom as well as several novels.

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.

IMAGINING ETHEL LANCE

by Carl Boon 

Najee Washington holds a photo of her grandmother Ethel Lance, one of the nine people killed in Wednesday's shooting at Emanuel AME Church, as she stands outside her home Friday, June 19, 2015, in Charleston, S.C. "She cared for everyone. She took care of people. She would give her last to anyone," said Washington. "That's what she was and that's what she'll always be." David Goldman / AP via NBC News

Tonight and removed from bullets,
she'd be swinging her great-grandson
in Wannamaker Park
in North Charleston,
happy for the chance
to see him smile--this kid
of unruly teeth and Jurassic World
pyjamas. Because Saturday nights
while her daughter waited tables
at the Olde Harbor Restaurant,
she had him. They ate
her famous lasagna, did puzzles,
imagined steamships. It made her
alive--past the dusty pews
of the church and the gracious oaks
of West Ashley. I don't care tonight
that bullets brought her down;
I care that this boy,
who knew Mahalia Jackson's name,
and Jesse Owens's stance,
and Dr. King's speeches,
brought her up
on so many Saturday nights.


Carl Boon lives in Istanbul, where he directs the English prep school and teaches courses in literature at Yeni Yuzyil University. Recent ot forthcoming poems appear in The Tulane Review, The Blue Bonnet Review, Posit, and other magazines.