OUT OF THE RACE

by David L Williams

Cartoon by Nick Anderson at The Week

A Republican state lawmaker has launched an investigation into Texas school districts over the type of books they have, particularly if they pertain to race or sexuality or "make students feel discomfort." State Rep. Matt Krause, in his role as chair of the House Committee on General Investigating, notified the Texas Education Agency that he is "initiating an inquiry into Texas school district content," according to an Oct. 25 letter obtained by The Texas Tribune… His list of titles includes bestsellers and award winners alike, from the 1967 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron and Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates to last year's book club favorites: “Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women that a Movement Forgot” by Mikki Kendall and Isabel Wilkerson's Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. —The Texas Tribune, October 26, 2021

The Brahmin cried, ‘I found a corpse inside

My mind, and gave it decent burial

To finally start the journey of my life

That had to wait until I became equal.’

I learned of this while reading a great book

I’d heard so much about, and now at last

Am disappointed at how long it took

To broach deep inequalities from Caste.

I doubt the author will raise much complaint

My paraphrasing that self-reformed Brahmin

Who boldly cast away the lifelong taint

He felt from having had to wear an emblem

Of how this hierarchy in history

Inflicted untold horrors and misery

Which still continue to the present day

Enslaved as mudsills in the USA.

Editor's Note: In quotation marks in stanza one is a paraphrase adapted from the words of a Brahmin quoted by Isabel Wilkerson on page 364 of Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. Minor adaptations by the poet create here a sort of “found poetic stanza.” For more on Wilkerson's book, see her NYT Magazine piece "America’s Enduring Caste System" and Sunil Khilnani’s New Yorker review, “Isabel Wilkerson’s World-Historical Theory of Race and Caste.”

David L Williams is recently retired from 34 years teaching high school English in Lincoln, Nebraska, his primary residence since he went to college there in the 80s. His poetry has mostly been written since May of 2021, and he has only recently started trying to publish, with success already in several journals.

WAYS TO AVOID BEN SHAPIRO'S TWITTER DISDAIN

by CL Bledsoe and Michael Gushue

Reinvent Mozart as a swastika.
Assert the superior caste of privilege-filled eyes,
while never mentioning your stigmatism.
Beige as the new black.
Be goddamned sure about something.
A hammer called reason to subvert any consideration,
Moral assumption as a knife to cut through the gray.
Go back in time and give Mohammed a hickey.
Dress all seed-vessels in the finest birthing habits.
Never look directly at those who rule us,
but use a mirror to avoid being turned
into stop motion playdough. Recite
The Pledge constantly under your breath:

There is a light that never burns out. I carry it 
under my tongue. When I stand on tiptoe, it will guide 
the unwashed through the wilderness.

CL Bledsoe is the author of seventeen books, most recently the poetry collection Trashcans in Love and the novel The Funny Thing About… . He lives in northern Virginia with his daughter and blogs, with Michael Gushue, at https://medium.com/@howtoeven 

Michael Gushue is co-founder of the nanopress Poetry Mutual Press, and he co-curates the reading series Poetry at the Watergate. His work can be found in journals such as Indiana Review, Third Coast, Redivider, Gargoyle, The Germ, and American Letters & Commentary and his books are Pachinko Mouth, Conrad, Gathering Down Women, and—in collaboration with CL Bledsoe—I Never Promised You A Sea Monkey. He lives in the Brookland neighborhood (“a shabby and decidedly unhip neighborhood” —New York Times) of Washington, D.C.