The New Verse News presents politically progressive poetry on current events and topical issues.
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Showing posts with label police shooting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label police shooting. Show all posts
the tensile strength of touch, the graceful creases
of a laugh line, the thrill of whispered thank yous.
Such gifts may allow us to survive our diminishments.
Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY. Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press. Mary’s poetry collection Merging Star Hypotheses was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2020.
of narcotics or an epidural, pain searing, I called
for my Mama. A grown woman, already a Mama
and I called for mine.
It wasn’t something I planned, the cry shot out
my grimaced mouth, my husband sitting by my side,
a nurse coaching me on. I shouted for my Mama
because somewhere in my subconscious I believed
no one else but my Mama could relieve me of my pain.
Not even the man who loves me could do that.
When I heard George Floyd called for his Mama,
(not his girlfriend or brother) I thought, Of course he did.
Who else but a Mama might rescue a son from the grip
of a cop determined to strangle the life out of him?
And when I learned Duante Wright called his Mama,
just before a cop shot him dead, I imagined him reaching
for his Mama. Who else but a Mama would lay their body
across a son to shield him from the bullet
they both knew was coming.
Laurie Rosen is a lifelong New Englander. Her poems have appeared in The London Reader, Muddy River Poetry Review, Beach Reads (an anthology from Third Street Writers), Peregrine, Oddball Magazine, and other journals.
SHOT BY A COP, PARALYZED, AND SHACKLED TO A HOSPITAL BED by Margaret Rozga
As Jacob Blake was freed from handcuffs in the hospital, the Kenosha police union said Friday that Blake put an officer in a headlock moments before being shot in the back. Since Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, was shot seven times in the back by a White officer, local officials have not discussed many details citing the ongoing investigation led by state investigators.
On Friday, the Kenosha Professional Police Association took issue with the public narrative, saying that he confronted officers, put an officer in a headlock and carried a knife that he refused to drop when ordered to by police, the union said. For Blake's attorneys, the police union's narrative is merely a tactic to justify the officers' actions. "I think it's the common strategy that police departments use in these type of circumstances. It's always trying to justify murder for misdemeanors," attorney B'Ivory LaMarr told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Friday. —CNN, August 29, 2020
Who made the decision to shackle him?
Who shackled him?
Who is the nurse who cares for him shackled?
Who is the doctor who does the surgery? Surgeries?
Was he shackled during surgery?
They did not say shackle. They said restrained.
What words minimize, hide, disguise, mask:
who uses words like this?
What words for this?
His father said handcuffed, handcuffed to the bed.
His father’s words leave the bedside, leave
the hospital, hit the air, hit the air waves,
hit the heart, cry out for release, cry for justice,
words that restrain other words, words that free.
Still to be told:
the nurse’s story, the nurses’ stories
the doctor’s, the doctors’.
The decider, the deciders, hold a press conference,
are pressed. Pressed, they leave. They leave questions
opening like unacknowledged wounds,
lingering like ghosts of the dead they cannot shackle.
Margaret Rozga is the current Wisconsin Poet Laureate. She writes poems from her ongoing concern for social justice.
Whatever you do, check
your tail lights before you leave
the neighborhood. And while
we’re on the subject of driving,
I know your dad doesn’t always
use his blinkers, but it’s imperative
that you signal when changing lanes.
When you are inevitably
Pulled over, please keep
both hands on the wheel while
you quietly wait. Calmly announce
what you’re doing before you
move. I know you’ve seen me
reach for my license and registration,
but you should not do this without
warning. Make sure to look him
in the eye, and say sir.
At all costs, you must
Show respect. If you are in a car
with friends and officers approach,
I forbid you to run—even if you are afraid.
In general, it’s better
not to hold your cell phone.
Someone may mistake it
for a gun. And speaking of
Guns, I’m afraid the Second Amendment
might not apply to you. Yes, your grandfather
keeps them, but I think it’s safer for you
to stay away. Sometimes, I think
It would be easier if you never
left home. Inside, you can
wear a hoodie without causing
undue fear. But when you’re home, please
double check to make sure the door
is not ajar. Lock it so no one
enters by mistake. Even then,
If in the middle of the night
you hear someone whispering
outside your window, while a flashlight
flickers on the glass, do not go
near the window. Please, whatever
you do, stay away from the window.
Instead, drop to the floor,
crawl under the bed, call
me and tell me you’re okay.
Rachel Mallalieu is an Emergency Physician and mother of five. She writes poetry in her spare time. Her work has been featured in TheNewVerse.News, Blood and Thunder, and is upcoming in Haunted Waters Press.
“Last Saturday, a neighbor in Fort Worth called the city’s non-emergency line because he was concerned about his neighbors, 28-year-old Atatiana Jefferson and her 8-year-old nephew. It was the middle of the night, but her front door was open. The dispatcher sent police officers, who appear to have treated the call as a reported burglary. While searching the perimeter of the house, Officer Aaron Dean saw a figure in the window. Without announcing himself, he yelled ‘Put your hands up! Show me your hands!’ Two seconds later, he fired his gun, killing Jefferson in her own home.” —Radley Balko, The Washington Post, October 15, 2019. Photo: A makeshift memorial outside the home of Atatiana Jefferson on Monday. Jefferson was fatally shot by a Fort Worth police officer early Saturday morning. (Jake Bleiberg/AP via The Washington Post, October 15, 2019
We wear a masque called freedom
But Atatiana was shot like a fugitive slave.
We masquerade as upright citizens
Brave this deadly force every goddam day
Masquerade as independent thinkers
While our thoughts get shot down in the streets.
We believe, like true believers, in the rule of law
The gangs in blue shoot through that too.
Our red, white and blue masques say VOTER
But our ballots keep disappearing.
When the ancestors greet Atatiana
They shake her alive. The masquerade is over.
Faith leaders wear the masque of concern
But their brand-new bibles are warped and cracking.
Atatiana’s neighbor, in masque, cries out They had no reason to come with guns drawn.
The ancestors ask: Are all the players numb?
Some, not all, though in costume, torn and dirtied, know.
The great pantomime and our long drawn out performance
Cracks and peels with every gun drawn and each bullet fired.
Judy Juanita's poetry has appeared in Obsidian II, 13th Moon, Painted Bride Quarterly, Croton Review, The Passaic Review, Lips, TheNewVerse.News, Poetry Monthly and Drumrevue 2000. Her short stories and essays appear widely. Juanita's semi-autobiographical novel Virgin Soul chronicled a black female coming of age in the 60s who joins the Black Panther Party. Her collection of essays, DeFacto Feminism: Essays Straight Outta Oakland was a distinguished finalist in OSU's 2016 Non/Fiction Collection Prize.
Sweet Security, that phantasmal beauty, lies buried 6 feet under.
I saw the body-cam footage, how her sister,
Paranoia, shot her dead—
don’t watch
spiders scrawl warnings on flesh, listen:
Paranoia laughs, freed from cuffs
of assumed innocence.
Witness her lie on the motel bed, her bare,
thin lips exposed in a cavernous grin,
her adamantine teeth.
She bites hard, man.
Cops claim she’d hidden the rifle under the bed, but
no one dared lift the sham,
confirm the threat.
Paranoia, hungry cougar, prowls. Growls feed me.
Her cousin, Injustice, that crack whore,
trolls the subway,
steals candy from fatherless kid’s pockets,
feeds the family sugar power-drops,
lollipops on dirty sticks,
prefers home-baked shortbreads dipped
in ghetto chocolate, rich and dark.
They all sit on Daddy’s knee,
cuz Mama Liberty
drowned in the harbor, fascist bling chains round her neck,
her tablet cracked, her gown stained black
by pigeon shit.
Everyone runs blind.
Crystal Snoddon is a Canadian writer, whose forthcoming and previous poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net, and can be found in Figroot Press, Rat's Ass Review, Anti-Heroin Chick, among others.
Judy Scott holds a photo of her son Walter Scott on Thursday after Michael Slager, a former police officer who shot and killed Mr. Scott in 2015 after a traffic stop, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for violating Mr. Scott’s civil rights. Credit: Credit Randall Hill/Reuters via The New York Times, December 7, 2017
I went to middle school with him,
Walter Scott. He was a year behind
And, as to his details, I don't remember.
I just don't remember.
I pulled out an old Annual after the shooting.
Wallace Middle School. New Horizons. 1979.
My parents sent me there against the advice of their peers.
"Violence," they said, "had happened,"
The past year. Middle school violence
In the Seventies. A big brawl, perhaps a stabbing
At the most. So antique.
38 years later, Walter Scott’s shot in the back.
The cop got 20 years.
Violence does not have a half-life
That diminishes over time
Or a blood-red glow that grows dimmer,
Though we wish it did.
He wears a large-collared shirt in the Annual.
I can't tell its colors.
The photos, back then, were all black and white.
Harold Oberman is a lawyer working and writing in Charleston, SC. His first poem was published in middle school and, subsequently, he has had his work published in TheNewVerse.News.
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.
Colleagues and parents on Thursday remembered Philando Castile as an ambitious man who served as a role model for hundreds of children before he was fatally shot by a police officer during a traffic stop in Minnesota. Photo: Philando Castile (L) is seen with a colleague in this undated J.J. Hill Montessori Magnet School yearbook photo. —TIME, July 7, 2016
Philando Castile, cafeteria
supervisor, remembered
which students couldn’t have
milk. I imagine his kids
lined up under the fluorescent
hum, pushing plastic trays
along the chrome lunch counter.
Yes to mashed potatoes.
No to baked beans. A little
more corn, please. Last stop
the quiet act of reaching
down into the chest cooler
to select white, chocolate,
or infinitely less popular juice
for kids Phil might’ve consoled
with a smile or clap on the shoulder.
Melissa Fite Johnson’s first collection, While the Kettle’s On (Little Balkans Press, 2015), won the Nelson Poetry Book Award and is a Kansas Notable Book. Her poems have appeared in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Rust + Moth, Broadsided Press, velvet-tail, and elsewhere. Melissa teaches English and lives with her husband in Kansas.
Diamond Reynolds (right) and her 4-year-old daughter. Both were in the car during Philando Castile's untimely death. Image source: Twitter via Ebony, July 7, 2016.
My granddaughter just turned four,
she holds as many fingers in the air and smiles,
our ancestral gap between her two front teeth,
her pearly face blushed.
She loves to sing and stands beside me
on a chair to help with food prep,
asks surprisingly complex questions
I often struggle to explain to her satisfaction.
I don’t know what to do with the headlines this morning.
I don’t want fear and hatred to win.
What words can I give you, Lavish,
that could possibly serve?
I can’t get out of my head,
your four-year-old girl comforting you,
you in handcuffs, partner dead.
Your courage, the facts, sir, the facts.
I see it. I hear it.
It's in my mouth, my lungs.
I cannot stop hearing her voice.
Four years old.
Four years old.
Four years, old.
A Pushcart nominee, Kari Gunter-Seymour holds a B.F.A. in graphic design and an M.A. in commercial photography. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in publications including Rattle, Crab Orchard Review, Main Street Rag, and The LA Times. She is the founder/curator of the “Women of Appalachia Project,” an arts organization (fine art and spoken word) she created to address discrimination directed at women living in Appalachia.
The figure of a large
unarmed middle-aged black
skinned man drowns in a fog
of gun smoke and his own blood,
beneath two badged blue-uniformed
policemen holding guns with triggers
completely pulled, magazines empty.
An eight point buck hangs head down,
feet tethered to a large oak,
reminds me of a thing of beauty,
desiccated, emasculated, wasted, bled,
hung out to dry for the glory
of the commemorative photo;
great white hunters stand
proudly in solidarity nearby.
But in Baton Rouge, the red stick,
there are no antlers, no ruminants,
no prosecutors, and no meat lockers.
The conviction rate for law enforcement
officers murdering black men is .01%
from all white juries. Although black
skinned persons comprise less than 25%
of the population, they comprise 100%
of all officer-related murders in Baton Rouge.
Flagrant fragrance, flat line, no scents at all,
no rhyme or reason, a dead fall.
John Dooley lives in the national forest near Prescott, Arizona, teaches in the Masters in Counseling Psychology program at Prescott College, and advocates for peace.
Seconds after a Chicago police officer opened fire on him as he ran from a South Side traffic stop, 17-year-old Cedrick Chatman had collapsed in the street when the officer's partner approached to take him into custody. "I give up. I'm shot," Chatman said to Officer Lou Toth, according to Toth's statement to investigators at the scene. A bullet had struck Chatman in the right side, pierced his heart and lodged in his spine. He died on the way to a hospital. The detail of Chatman's last words was included in hundreds of pages of investigative records released by the city Friday that laid out how Chatman's suspected involvement in a violent robbery and carjacking ended with his fatal shooting less than a mile away. The documents — which included detectives' reports from the scene, autopsy results, inventory logs, lineups and transcripts of witness interviews — show that Officer Kevin Fry consistently told investigators he saw Chatman turn with a dark object in his hand as he ran full speed across the busy South Shore neighborhood intersection in the early afternoon. "Officer Fry said he believed that the object was a handgun and he was in fear of his partner's life, as Toth was in close proximity to the offender," said an incident report documenting Fry's initial interview with detectives. The object turned out to be a black iPhone box. —Chicago Tribune, Jan. 15, 2016
A small dark object
Can disappear
One minute it’s here
And the next
It is gone
Somewhere in
The Northern or the Southern Hemisphere
It’s linked to fate
Bad luck and chance
Starting its existence
In someone’s hands
Below a car-seat
A bulge in a pocket
No video caught
And then vanishing
I suppose
Into thin air
Like unicorns
Like UFO’s
Small dark objects
Are everywhere
Everywhere except
Where they are claimed to be
A small dark object is
A mystery
Paul Smith lives near Chicago. He writes fiction & poetry. He likes Hemingway, really likes Bukowski, the Rolling Stones, Beatles, Kinks and Slim Harpo. He can play James Jamerson's bass solo for 'Home Cookin' by Junior Walker & the Allstars.
Inspired by the young demonstrators in Madison, protesting the police killing of Tony Robinson.
Spartacus on a hill
dreaming up at a tapestry of stars
as slaves from a far flung empire
prepared to fight Rome.
What made the ragged minions
with nothing to call their own
except misery
dare to challenge Caesar's throne,
its fearsome weaponry,
legendary battles won,
and all the philosophical sophistry
used to justify its reign?
What gave them the temerity
to defy gods, to tear down
idols, to question
the exalted certainty of the known?
Look into the eyes
of a mother who has lost her son
to a centurion,
a father carrying the remains
of a child slain by drones.
Listen to the cries
of a generation doomed to oblivion
and you will know why you must rise
as they have done.
Margery Parsons is an activist and poet; she lives in Chicago, works for an arts organization, loves movies and music.
