by Katherine West
America’s growing Black community is “not a monolithic population, but one that has people of many different demographic, social and economic characteristics and many different experiences in their backgrounds.” Mark Hugo Lopez, Director of Race and Ethnicity Research at Pew Research Center, told The Root in an interview, March 30, 2021.
On the other side
of the street
walks a young
Black man
going to work
perhaps
or perhaps
like me
getting a coffee
while the clothes spin
Perhaps
his great great great
grandfather
was a Buffalo Soldier
Perhaps
his family
settled here
before New Mexico became a state
Perhaps he's a painter
that paints his
history
how history
surrounds him
like a herd
steaming and stamping
in the morning cold
jumpy
dangerous
or quietly
pulling
at the turf
The herd contains him
shifts
when he takes
a careful
step
but any sudden
movement
could cause a stampede
leaving the painter crushed
to nothing
at one
finally
with his desert home
with the dry grass
the wind riffles
like the tawny fur
of the great cat
he becomes
when he paints
at one
finally
with the invisible wind
uncontained
free to walk the world
unhated
Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near Silver City. She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and Riddle, as well as one novel, Lion Tamer. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Writing in a Woman's Voice, Lalitamba, Bombay Gin, The New Verse News, Tanka Journal, Splash!, Eucalypt, and Southwest Word Fiesta. The New Verse News nominated her poem "And Then the Sky" for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. In addition she has had poetry appear as part of art exhibitions at the Light Art Space gallery in Silver City, New Mexico and at the Windsor Museum in Windsor, Colorado. Using the name Kit West, Katherine's new novel, When Night Comes, A Christmas Carol Revisited has just been released, and a selection of poetry entitled Raising the Sparks will come out in March of 2021, both published by Breaking Rules Publishing. She is presently at work on the sequel to When Night Comes. It is called Slave, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Revisited. She is also an artist.
