JANUARY 20, 2021 / DATE POEM

by Ethan Thayumanavan

Born November 20, 1942.

Inaugurated on January 20, 2021.

 

Born June 14, 1946.

Inaugurated on January 20, 2017.

 

Ruby Bridges: Born September 8, 1954.

First day in a white classroom on November 14, 1960.

 

Angela Davis: Born January 26, 1944.

Became the third Woman on the fbi’s most wanted list on August 18, 1970.

Released on bail after 16 months of incarceration on February 23, 1972.

Acquitted of all charges by an all-white jury on June 4, 1972.

 

Marsha P. Johnson: Born August 24, 1945.

Stonewalled the nypd on June 28, 1969.

The nypd ruled Marsha’s death a suicide on July 6, 1992.

 

Martin Luther King Jr: Born January 15, 1929.

Had a dream on August 28, 1963.

Went to the mountaintop on April 3, 1968.

Assassinated by white supremacists on April 4, 1968.

 

Emmett Till: Born July 25, 1941.

Whistled at a white girl on August 28, 1955.

He was two years older than

 

Tamir Rice: Born June 25, 2002.

Murdered by a white man with a badge on November 22, 2014.

 

jim crow: Born Juneteenth, 1865.

just won’t fucking

die

 

I imagine that mista past president has sat

underneath palms in the Middle East

but has never tasted the warm sweetness

of a date

 

can’t bring himself to put his lips on

Worn Leather and Scar Tissue and Age Lines

and Exhaustion and Folk Music and Survival

 

classrooms shove dates down my throat

put their hands over my mouth

so I have to swallow

don’t even prepare ‘em right

 

leave pits in my stomach

forget the date came from the tree

came from the seed

came from the pit

came from the date

 

which is to say that linearity and

history are both constructed.

what is a date

without person and place?

time does not march forward

unless we do

 

I hold a date in the palm of my hand

sink my teeth into it

bite down into the gooey, sticky sweetness

savor the moment

write my own History

write my own poem

call this a radical act

Ethan Thayumanavan is an aspiring poet of Indian descent, from Amherst, Massachusetts. He is a full-time student at Columbia University. His exploration of poetry began when he joined a collegiate spoken word poetry team, but his love for the written word has influenced his transition from performance to writing.

GOOD FOOLISHNESS

by Michael L. Ruffin

We've been through

some bad foolishness

the last four years.

We'll go through

more foolishness

the next four. 

We'll see efforts to do

foolish things such as

expand health care,

address climate change,

deal rationally with pandemics,

address systemic racism,

follow science, and

seek economic fairness.

Such efforts will

face resistance,

confront opposition, and

be labeled radical.

They'll make progress.

We'll make progress.

Get ready 

for more foolishness,

for necessary foolishness,

for meaningful foolishness,

for compassionate foolishness

for positive foolishness,

for helpful foolishness

for hopeful foolishness.

Get ready 

for good foolishness.

Michael L. Ruffin is a writer, editor, preacher, and teacher living and working in Georgia. He posts poems on Instagram (@michaell.ruffin) and prose opinions at On the Jericho Road. He is author of Fifty-Seven: A Memoir of Death and Life and of the forthcoming Praying with Matthew. His poetry has appeared at The New Verse News, Rat's Ass Review, 3 Moon Magazine, and U-Rights Magazine.

ODE TO TOM HAYDEN (1939-2016)

by Clara B. Jones


To contest the binary is a political act because
Tom was not class-identified—riding Greyhound
To Manhattan with Casey, coming to the party
On the East Side, wearing jeans as young
Revolutionaries honored his plans to change
America The Beautiful after S.D.S. decreed that
Tactics would be decided by participatory vote
And all households would have no fewer than two
Friends from Cuba where macaw vocalizations
Filter through wet leaves, their raspy staccatos
And showy displays overhead—sounds infusing
Darkness between canopy and soil where
Hermaphrodite earthworms live non-binary lives
As soil engineers for microbes and rhizomes as Tom
Engineered comrades revising theories of profit and
Loss—tools of oppression in Braverman's terms.
SNCC a symbol of our will to re-program synapses
While Tom's persona heralded a terra incognita
Of radical outcomes.

Clara B. Jones is a retired scientist, currently practicing poetry in Silver Spring, MD (USA). As a woman of color, she writes about the “performance” of identity, alienation, and power and conducts research on experimental poetry. Clara is author of two chapbooks, and her poems, reviews, essays, and interviews have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous venues.

CALL AND RESPONSE

by Michelle Marie

Say radical.
Say feminism.
Say Qur'an.
And confuse the fuck out of Americans
Who forget that
Christian values
Inspired both the slave driver
And the abolitionist.
A religion can be more
Than one thing
At once.

Michelle Marie was a blog correspondent for Stop Street Harassment and is currently a reader columnist for The News Tribune.

RADICALIZED

Editor's Note: We are pleased to repost this poem, originally published in TheNewVerse.News on Sunday, March 8, 2015. It is one of our 2015 Pushcart Prize nominees.

RADICALIZED
by Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco

Image source: RCOG Globeal Network International Women’s Day Page

The main thing was, she
listened. A
cliché.

So we told her
everything: how we cared

how we couldn’t
stand

watching all the news, how sad we felt.

She said we’re right. We told her
more: little

slips like pretty dolls
with long loose hair

laid on their backs –

here: the teacher
who won’t look
at us

my mother’s glass of brandy
every night,
her soft red cheeks.

She said the answer and it was
the one we wanted.

On the big plane
looking down
at the dark world we held

our coats wrapped tight
as love

around our ribs. The future waited like a bear,
still asleep.


Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco lives in California's Central Valley, where she works as a librarian. Her poems have appeared in Word Riot, Hobart, decomP, The Tule Review, and Right Hand Pointing, among others.

RADICALIZED

by Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco

Image source: RCOG Globeal Network International Women’s Day Page

The main thing was, she
listened. A
cliché.

So we told her
everything: how we cared

how we couldn’t
stand

watching all the news, how sad we felt.

She said we’re right. We told her
more: little

slips like pretty dolls
with long loose hair

laid on their backs –

here: the teacher
who won’t look
at us

my mother’s glass of brandy
every night,
her soft red cheeks.

She said the answer and it was
the one we wanted.

On the big plane
looking down
at the dark world we held

our coats wrapped tight
as love

around our ribs. The future waited like a bear,
still asleep.


Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco lives in California's Central Valley, where she works as a librarian. Her poems have appeared in Word Riot, Hobart, decomP, The Tule Review, and Right Hand Pointing, among others.

ONLY IN MY ROOM, NOT IN GAZA

by Catherine Wald

“Everything is beautiful in my room, but only in my room, not in Gaza.” --Nidaa Badwan quoted by Jodi Rudoren in The New York Times February 28, 2015

Call me radical, you who uphold
hegemony of the hothead; call me
artist when I find beauty on the
inside, where it’s supposed to
have been stamped out; call
me traditionalist, locked away in
my own self-inflicted zenana.

Here, no one will beat me or throw
stones after me.  Here, I can forget about
which missile coming from which side
may explode my face. Here, I have
rediscovered what safety feels like.
Look carefully: let me remind you, too.

This is the only way I know to honor
perfection of nests and eggs and those
fledglings straining at the windows who
will have to learn to fly inside their heads
like I have, like we all have, in this ageless
conga line of barefoot women on hot sands.

Here, when I am punched in the gut, it’s by sunlight
or soul; colors or ideas. Freedom, I call this freedom.
No need to send for a doctor. This is how I heal.

Some day I would like to fit the whole world into this room.

Catherine Wald's books include poetry (Distant, burned-out stars, Finishing Line Press, 2011), nonfiction (The Resilient Writer: Stories of Rejection and Triumph From 23 Top Authors, Persea Books, 2005) and a translation from French of Valery Larbaud’s Childish Things (Sun & Moon Press). Her poems have been published in American Journal of Nursing, Buddhist Poetry Review, Chronogram, Exit 13, Friends Journal, Jewish Literary Journal, The New Poet, Society of Classical Poets, The 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly and Westchester Review.