TWO SIDES TO KENOSHA

by David Southward

Officer Sheskey feared for his life;

thinking that Jacob clutched a knife,

he shot, shot, shot in self-defense,

assured of his own innocence.

No charge was brought: who would convict

a fear too sane to contradict,

when video (which carries clout)

leaves wiggle room for reasoned doubt?

Jacob also feared for his life;

seeing the gunmen, he knew his knife 

would prove no use in self-defense.

He knew no black man’s innocence

is ever presumed, that courts convict 

the captured, suavely contradict

their stories, summon legal clout

to silence them with reasoned doubt.

 

 

David Southward teaches in the Honors College at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is the author of Apocrypha (Wipf & Stock 2018) and Bachelor’s Buttons (Kelsay Books 2020), and winner of the 2019 Frost Farm Prize for Metrical Poetry.

JEREMIAH 2020AD

by Julie Kramer

Immigrant families wait in May 2019 in Los Ebanos, Tex., to be searched and taken to a U.S. Border Patrol station after they were caught illegally crossing into the United States from Mexico. Credit: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post, October 23, 2020

“Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” —Matthew 19:14

 

You put them in cages

    and arm their enemies with AK47s

You take away their food

   and say that it is for their own good

You dirty their air and water

   and point to it as progress

You make their world uninhabitable

   and call their cries a hoax

You let your police

   murder them in their beds

   and say they deserved it

You punish their governors

   for standing up for them

You take away their families’ health insurance

   and say it’s in service of freedom

You beat them in the streets

   because they challenge your authority

You promise them relief

   and present it to the rich

You insult their allies

   and sell out their friends

You sit by as they die of a dread disease

  saying it will just... go away

You defile and debase

   the halls of their government

   with petty criminals and yes men

You make their lives less sane, less safe, and less free

 

You think that their God is sleeping

   do not be deceived

God will bring about his justice

   through the least of things

Including teenage TikTokers

               small dollar donations

                                absentee ballots

                                               and subpoenas.

 

Julie Kramer is a molecular biologist, lay minister, marketer, and mom of three teenagers living in Madison, Wisconsin.  In 2012, she made the unforeseen and disconcerting discovery that she is also a poet. Her themes include family, religion, #me too, and current events. She has had previous work published in the Journal of Women and Religion, and the Wisconsin UCC Conference newsletter.

OCTOBER 2020

by Roberto Christiano 

"Fear of Pain," oil painting by Igor Shulman

I have heard the sirens falling

falling like the songs of sorrow

I have seen the black man hobbled

hobbled by the blues of bullets

I have smelt the forests burning

burning till the ashes whiten

 

I have seen the mermaids leaving

leaving as our rivers rumble

I have heard the children crying

crying with our cupboards empty

I have smelt the fear of winter

winter with the sirens calling

 

Roberto Christiano won the 2010 Fiction Prize from Northern Virginia Review. He received a Pushcart Prize nomination for poetry in Prairie Schooner. His poetry is anthologized in The Gávea–Brown Book of Portuguese-American Poetry (Brown University). His chapbook Port of Leaving was published by Finishing Line Press. Other poems have appeared in The New Verse News, The Washington Post, Writer.org, and The Sow's Ear.

BENIGHTED

by Shalala Leny

Diana Ejaita’s “Portrait of History”

Black bodies dance under white, bright streetlights
The same way they do under white police
Black guns pierce black souls covered by white sheets
Black skin knows the sun taste better at night
We feed predator, we know this outright
We mourn Garner, the others, we cry, we grieve
We struggle, we bleed, and no, I can’t breathe
They kill us in many, different ways despite
Our protests for rights and liberty
While they rewrite our wide history
So we will ebonize strange, white, bright lies
We are not strange fruit, striped scarred stitchery
One day, revolution will come through benighted skies
One day, you’ll see that still like air, we’ll rise


Shalala Leny is a student and freelance writer in Miami, FL. Her poetry tends to explore the topics of race and identity, especially in a black person in America.

MY DAUGHTERS MARCH

by Janice Lynch Schuster

Demonstrators block the intersection of Forest Drive and Hilltop during a police violence protest in Annapolis, MD on Friday afternoon. (By Matthew Cole, (Annapolis) Capital Gazette /December 12, 2014) 

Lined up with
signs and silent
rage
protestors stymie
rush hour drivers,
so eager to be home
and done
with the day.

For the marchers,
some things are never
done.
Even when they breathe
their nostrils
burn
with awareness
that others cannot.

some mother’s child
will be next
it is only a matter
of time before
another child goes down
on a playground
or in a school
or home
or sleeping
or whatever it is
the living
take for granted

What are my girls
to the irritated drivers
who bitch
to Facebook
and text their nannies?
Thugs, they shout
at my daughters,
safe behind
their horns.

Whatever they knew
of care
is gone on the wind.
The women--
solemn
behind their signs--
pray anyway


Janice Lynch Schuster is the author of a collection, Saturday at the Gym, and has been published in various print and online venues, including Poet Lore, Your Daily Poem, and The Broadkill Review. She writes about health care and public policy, lives in Annapolis, MD, and works in Washington, DC.