LAST WORDS

by Joan Mazza

Without TV, I turn to the Internet to see
videos of crowds rushed by the police
with shields and full riot gear as they push
back protestors. Tear gas and smoke,
shouting, chanting one man’s name,
his last words an echo of another’s—

I can’t breathe.

So many people pushed together, crowds
breathing each other’s breaths, droplets
of anger and outrage pooling to form
a stream, a river, an ocean of grief,
hundreds of years of slave masters
and tyrants, bullies and dictators.

I can’t breathe.

Gowned and masked, medical workers
adjust tubing and drips, hear last gasps
of the those dying alone. No visitors
allowed. We’re socially distant, isolated,
afraid of friends and family who have
marched to say no to brutality.

I can’t breathe.

George Floyd, your name enters
the litany with Philando Castile, Sandra
Bland, Michael Brown, Eric Garner.
White, armed protestors who threaten
the Wisconsin governor’s life are met
with hard stares, not tear gas.

I can’t breathe.

I’m coughing. My throat is sore. My eyes
hurt, joints ache. Ticks and pollen
are thick this year. The news is muddy.
Our president is no leader, no comfort.
He threatens more beatings, promises
shooting will reign supreme.

I can’t breathe.


Joan Mazza worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, and taught workshops on dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self, and her work has appeared in Italian Americana, Poet Lore, The MacGuffin, Prairie Schooner, and The Nation.

MOTHERS OF THE MOVEMENT#DemConvention 7/26/16

by Janet Leahy




Strong women
grieving the loss of a son or daughter
speaking with love
trying to correct what needs
to be corrected
remembering
            Trayvon
            Michael
            Eric
            Sandra
            Jordan
            Dontre
            Hadiya
            Blair
            Oscar
                        and all the others
                        who have gone missing
                        from the table of family.

Janet Leahy‘s poems have been published in print and online journals.  Most recently her poems have won second place and honorable mention in the 2016 People and Ideas Poetry Contest.  She has published two collections of poetry, The Storm, Poems of War, Iraq, and Not My Mother’s Classroom. 

MY PTSD, or 558 AND STILL COUNTING

by Akua Lezli Hope




Each new report reopens old wounds:
time we pulled off the Jersey highway to nap
police lights blinding as husband yanked me
awake that night, fear and fury urgent in his voice
uniforms on both sides yelling, you can’t rest
on this white shoulder, threatening me back
to 16 with sweet baby sister on the subway
the short uniformed man’s hand on his stick
did it matter that we were on our way to Natural History
that she was only four like Lavish Diamond’s
girl made to witness violence and her protector’s
vulnerability?  We thought no, no, never again
when grandmother Eleanor Bumpurs was shot
at home for no good reason, never again be killed
for art, for its denial, or repression like Michael Stewart
never again when Abner Louima was broomsticked
and never again when Amadou Diallo was drowned
in a hale of 41 mistaken, misguided missiles and before
that did we think ourselves lucky, nothing permanent
when it was only a night stick upside Doug’s head
at the protest, only blunt force trauma,
not a noose in a lonely cell like Sandra Bland,
not spine-severing vehicular lynching like Freddie Gray,
not bullets, bullets, bullets as in Delrawn Small,
a father angry at being imperiled, bullets for preteen
Tamir Rice playing alone in the park, bullets
in Alton Sterling selling CDs, number 558
to be shot and killed by police this year
and I tremble remembering, remembering
all the insults hurled, the bullets I’ve dodged

Author’s Note: Eleanor Bumpurs was an African-American woman who was shot and killed on October 29, 1984 by New York City police. Michael Jerome Stewart  was a graffiti artist, beaten into a coma by New York City Transit Police for graffiti on a subway station wall  and died September 28, 1983. Abner Louima, was tortured by Brooklyn police (1997) and won $8.75 million dollars. Douglass David Walker was the founder of Alien Planetscapes and an activist. Amadou Diallo a West African immigrant was shot 41 times by 4 policemen in the doorway of his apartment building (1999). Sandra Bland died in a Texas jail cell after a traffic stop. Lavish/Diamond, the girlfriend of Philando Castile, broadcast the aftermath of their deadly traffic stop. Delrawn Small, a 37-year-old father of three, was killed in front of his family at a traffic light by an off duty Brooklyn cop while on their way to see July 4th fireworks this year. See “The Counted” at The Guardian.

Akua Lezli Hope is a creator who uses sound, words, fiber, glass, and metal, to create poems, patterns, stories, music, ornaments, adornments, and peace whenever possible. She has won fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Ragdale, Hurston Wright writers, and the National Endowment for The Arts.  She is a Cave Canem fellow. Her manuscript Them Gone won Red Paint Hill Publishing’s Editor’s Prize and will be published in 2016.

DEAR SANDRA FROM DA RED LINE L

by Elbert Tavon Briggs





conversation
front page
u.s.a. nation
minor traffic violation

small town texas justice
does not include us
the lost children from Africa
successful was She

career moved her
hired by HBCU
prairie view of life
celebrating highway drive

back to not so sweet home
chicago
lane change should not yield Life
metro chi-town

careless line crossed
close encounter
yet She was not counted as Human
European blue heritage said

“get out of
the car
or
i will light you up”

two bodies
vanished from
patrol dash cam view
Louis sang, “why must i be so black and blue”

five hundred dollars bail for
escalated minor traffic violation
now criminal justice experts
defend grand jury decision

no acquiescence to
depression from caged
could have been released
on Her own recognizance

with stamped instructions
“pay the fine”
via certified mail
yet She was not fine

as if Chile
should have been happy
getting stopped
and arrested

still two bodies vanished
from dash cam view
steel bars closed in
on Her humanity

found hanging
from plastic bagged-lynch rope
are we suppose to cope
in concrete cage

still most can’t grasp
Sandra’s historic rage

summer of 2015
i rallied before a march
with Her Mother
and so many others
Professor Maya
this caged bird
can’t sing no more


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 my 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.

BELATED

by Megan Collins

I’ll admit I did it, too—loved a lion
I’d never heard of until he was dead.
Scrolling through photographs, I fell
for his amber eyes. I even noted how—
in some poses—he seemed as benign
as my golden retriever, asleep at my feet.
When I read of the arrow in this lion’s side,
the forty hours he suffered, I felt my throat
stiffen like cooling wax, felt my eyes
sting as if exposed to flame.

For days, I said his name—Cecil, Cecil—
but I had to Google the woman (Sandra!)
who died in a jail cell, who’d been dragged
from her car, pulled by her collar like a dog.
I loved her, then, too—how she fought
in ways I’ve never had to, how her smile
in photographs made me want to smile back.
Her laughter, I imagined, would sound like a song.

But—how easy it is to love a victim.
How easy to love what’s already gone.


Megan Collins holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University. She teaches creative writing and literature in Connecticut, and is also an editor of 3Elements Review. Her work has appeared in many journals, including Compose, Linebreak, Rattle, Spillway, and Tinderbox Poetry Journal. 

HER NAME WAS SANDRA BLAND

by Janice D. Soderling

Here I am, back home in the land of the free and the brave
where fewer are free and many required to have courage.
A rainy morning, the bus backs out from its slot,
the driver honks like a steamship captain leaving the dock.
Across the aisle is a thirty-something pretending to be a kid,
his belly hanging over red bermuda shorts, his dirty red
dunks on the seat. He swerves through excuses. "Forget it,"
he says, "forget it." Every politico wears a flag pin and the Court
says corporations are persons, and the war on poverty mystically
became a war on the poor. The trendiest Wall is domestic.
A red state is not a reference to Russia, but to a Republican bastion.
When the wall fell in Berlin, protest poetry plunged out of fashion.
That was way back in 1986, Sandinista, Khomeini, arms for hostages,
Ollie the supporting actor, Ron the Baddest crying in the backwaters,
preparing the political way. That was the year of Iran-Contra.
Who remembers? Who these days can find Nicaragua
on the map let alone spell it? Can that fat man-boy, barking
into his cell phone at his mom? That selfsame year Mr. Gorbachev
released Irina Ratushinskaya from a long prison sentence
handed down for poetry-writing addiction. Who remembers?
In prison Irina suffered multiple concussions and US poets took notice.
Now jail concussions are as commonplace as tear gas and tasers.
Who remembers that the Court declared abortion was a fundamental right
Martin Luther King got a federal holiday
Who will rescue the dignity of snitched autopsy reports declaimed as poetry
at academic forums? I am home again, home again, where something honestly
important has been forgotten, torn down, jettisoned, jerry-built,
abandoned, collapsing around our ears. The bus enters the freeway:
again so much hate in the air, the American nightmare, waves of banker gain,
and marginal difference between tabloid TV and election campaigns
because bad cooks are spaciously in control and the biggest political party
these days is the party of non-voters. Who reads poetry anyway,
and what was that black woman's name, the one found dead in her cell,
that Illinois academic pulled over in Texas for an improper lane change?


Janice D. Soderling is a frequent contributor to The New Verse News.

I AM: THE ARREST OF SANDRA BLAND

The following is a found poem created by the Editor of TheNewVerse.News from the words of Sandra Bland (according to a HuffPost transcript prepared by Ryan Grim with Matt Ramos and Dhyana Taylor from the dash cam video) as spoken to Texas state trooper Brian Encinia and, later, a female officer, after Encinia stopped Sandra Bland's car on July 10. Sandra Bland was later found dead in a Waller County, Texas jail cell.

Sandra Bland

Got here just
today.
I’m
waiting
on you. This
is your job.
                             I'm
                             waiting
                             on you. What
do you want
me to do?
I am.
                             I really am.
I feel
like it’s crap what
I’m
getting a ticket for.
I was
getting out of your way.
You were speeding up,
tailing me,
so I move over and you stop me.
So yeah,
I am
a little irritated., but
that doesn’t stop you
from giving me
a ticket.
You asked me
what was wrong,
now I told you.
So now
                 I'm
                                  done,
                                                     yeah.
I'm

in my car.
Why do I have to
put out my cigarette?"
I don't have to step
out of my car. Why
am I . . .  No, you

don't have the right. No, you
                                                  don't have the right. You
                                                                                             don’t have the right. No, you
                                                  don’t have the right
to do this.

I refuse

to talk to you other than
to identify myself.

I am

getting removed
for failure to signal?

And I'm

calling my lawyer.
OK,
you're going to
yank me
out of the car?
OK,
alright. Let’s do this.
Don't touch me!
                             Don't touch me.
                                                          Don't touch me!
I’m

not under arrest.
You
                                                 don't have the right
to take me
out of the car

I'm

under arrest?
For what?
                For what?
                                For what?
                                                 Why
am I

being
apprehended? You’re trying
to give me a ticket
for failure . . .

                      Why

am I

being
apprehended? You just
opened my—

So you're threatening
to drag me out
of my own car?
And then . . .

Wow.
        Wow.

                                  For a failure to signal?
You're doing all this
                                  for a failure to signal?

Right. Yeah,
let's take this to court.
Let’s
do this.
                                  For a failure to signal? Yup,
                                  for a failure to signal!

I'm

not on the phone.
I have a right
to record. This
is my property.

Sir?

for a fucking failure to signal.
My
goodness.
Y’all are interesting.
                                    Very interesting.
You feelin’
good about yourself?
                                  You feelin’
                                  good about yourself?
                                                                     For a failure to signal,
you feel real
good about yourself
don’t you?
                                  you feel
                                  good about yourself
                                  don’t you?

Why

am I

being arrested?

Why
can’t you . . .

                                  Why

                                   am I

                                   being arrested?

Why
don’t you tell me
that part?

Why
will you not tell me
w     h     a     t     ‘     s           g     o     i     n     g          on     ?

I’m
not complying
‘cause you just pulled me
out of my car.
Are you
fucking
kidding me? This
is some bull . . .
'Cause you know this
straight bullshit. And you're
full of shit.                 Full of straight shit.
That's all y’all are
is some straight scared cops.
South Carolina
got y’all bitch asses
scared. That’s
all it is.
Fucking scared          of a female.
I was trying
to sign
the fucking ticket --   whatever.
Are you fucking
serious? Oh
I can’t wait
'til we go to court.
O     o     h
I
can’t wait.
I
cannot wait
'til we go to court.
                                     I can’t wait.
                                                               Oh I can’t wait!
You want me
to sit down now?
Or
are you going to throw me to the floor?

That would make you feel better
about yourself?
                                                              Nah that would make you feel better
                                                              about yourself.

That would make you feel real good wouldn't it?

Pussy ass.
                  Fucking pussy.
                                                              For a failure to signal
                                                              you’re doing all of this.
In little ass
Praire View,
Texas.
My God they must have ...

I’m getting a --
for what?           For what?
I’m getting a warning
for what?           For what!?
Well you just pointed me
over there! Get
your mind right.

O      o      h
I swear
on my life,
y'all are some
pussies. A pussy-ass
cop,
for a fucking signal you’re
gonna take me to jail.
                                                     For a fucking ticket. What
                                                     a pussy. What
                                                     a pussy. You’re about
to break my fucking wrist!

I’m
standing
still!

You keep moving
me, goddammit.

Don't touch me.
                                                      Fucking pussy  --
                                                                                                     for a traffic ticket.
You asked me
what was wrong!
Do I feel
like I have anything
on me?                                          This a fucking maxi dress.
                                                                                                     This a maxi dress.
                                                      Fucking assholes. You’re
about to break my wrist. Can you
stop? You’re about to fucking
break my wrist! Stop!!!          
                                                      For a fucking traffic ticket,
                                                                                                      you are such a pussy.
You are
such a pussy.
For                                                 a traffic signal!
Don’t it make you feel
real good
don’t it? A female
                                                      for a traffic ticket.
Don’t it make you feel
good Officer Encinia? You're
a real man now.

I got
epilepsy, you motherfucker.

Good?

Good?

Make you feel real
good for a female. Y'all
strong, y'all real
strong.

I
can’t go
anywhere with
your fucking
knee
in my
back,
           duh!

Whatever,                           whatever.

If I could,                            I can't.

                                            I can't even
                                                                                      fucking feel my arms.

Goddamn.
                                            I can't . . .

You just
slammed my head into
       the ground and you
                                      do not even care ...

                                             I can't
                                                                                     even                                              hear.

He slammed my
fucking head
into the ground.

What
the hell.
All of this                               for a traffic signal.
I swear to God.
All of this                               for a traffic signal.

Thank you for recording!
Thank you!                            For a traffic signal --
slam me
into the ground and
everything!
                                                Everything!
I hope
y'all
feel good

And No
you didn't.
                                                 You didn't see
everything
leading
up
to
it . . .

You
don't
have
to.