BLOODY SUNDAYS

by Julie A. Dickson

50 years ago:

Derry, January 30, 1972; Selma, March 7, 1972

 

Why—these days are described as

bloody, massacres to mark history, crimson

streaks run down pages of time, to remind

that violence, oppression from the past can

stay, outlast, repeat in supreme efforts to

suppress those deemed weak or less?

 

How long must we sing this song, how long?

 

Today marches against memories we

cannot fathom but in reality exist, bloody

Sundays describe fragility of humanity,

pounded down, shot and hung, blood banners,

flags of wars not won, remind the masses

conflict flows, exsanguination rivulets, lives lost.

 

There's many lost, but tell me who has won?

 

 

Julie A. Dickson is a poet whose work addresses bullying, environment, current events and personal memories. She holds a BPS in Behavioral Science: Gerontology and works with the elderly. Dickson is a past poetry board member and Push Cart nominee. Her work appears in Blue Heron, Misfit, Ekphrastic Review and other journals or in full length on Amazon.

NEW YEAR'S WISH

by George Salamon

Out of our broken mouths
The protests get wilder,
The occupation did not last.
The marches lost their rhythm,
Compelling poets to abandon
Shining harmonies and blow
Shrilly in chopped up phrases,
Raging against the malice
In the heart and at the helm
Of people blinded by false
Promises and propelled by
Dark urges, only nudging us
Not to close our eyes to
What humanity has done in
Good and evil, and not yet
Say goodbye to all that.

George Salamon lives and writes in St. Louis, MO and most recently has contributed to One Sentence Poems, The Asses of Parnassus, Dissident Voice and TheNewVerse.News.

LOW BEAMS IN THE MISSISSIPPI DELTA

by James Croteau

Along the Mississippi Delta. Image source: My American Odyssey

Only low beams lit the road

as my parents drove Highway 61

from Memphis through Clarksdale

to Cleveland with civil rights marches

all around us. I never knew

it's not a delta at all, no mouth

until further south. It's all alluvial

plain, this place of my birth. Grandpa

disembarked in Baltimore's harbor

in 1921, moved south when

cotton was still king but

he never planted. Instead he owned

a five and dime on Main Street

in Cleveland. I was proud

to help clerk. Sometimes he'd aim

squinted eyes my way, talk the Italian

he taught me “follow that N-word."

"It's the longest stretch of straight road

east of the Great River," my dad

always said as he drove, low beams

to avoid blinding the oncoming

drivers like us. We got used to not seeing

anything beyond the white

cotton by the side of the road.

Living legacies are often at the periphery

of the privileged. Even amid

outcries at the murders in the streets

and the churches, we whites miss

the lay of the land by

low beaming our questions--

Was the officer following policy?

Was the shooter mentally ill?

Isn't the KKK really to blame?

But I've been lucky, my eyes

have been pried apart by

a few good people. I see some

beyond the well-meant

intentions in front of my face.

The fertile flatness was freely

brought by the floods of the Yazoo

and Mississippi, then it was stolen

and exploited--Indian removal, slavery,

sharecropping, Jim Crow de jure

and de facto, this history's alive and

denied. If I high beam my heart

I can see that I could have been

Darren Wilson, even Dylann Roof.

I learn how the land of my birth

really lies, only when I can feel

the white of my finger placed

everyday on the trigger of the gun

I was given on the day I was born.

James M. Croteau lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan with his partner of 28 years, Darryl, and their two Labrador retrievers. Jim grew up gay and Catholic in the southern United States and loved his mother very much. He has had poems published in Hoot: a Postcard review of {mini} poetry and prose, The New Verse News, and Right Hand Pointing. He has a series of poems upcoming in April 2014 in Assaracus: A Journal of Gay Poetry.