TOO MANY / TO MANY

by Ron Riekki

Following a comprehensive investigation, the Justice Department announced today [December 12, 2024] that the Mount Vernon, New York, Police Department (MVPD) engages in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of rights secured by the U.S. Constitution and federal law. Specifically, the Justice Department finds that MVPD:

• Uses excessive force in numerous ways, including by unnecessarily escalating minor encounters and by overusing tasers and closed-fist strikes, particularly against individuals who have already been taken to the ground, are controlled by many officers or are already fully or partially restrained;
• Conducted unlawful strip searches and body cavity searches of individuals until at least 2023; and
• Makes arrests without probable cause.

Sometimes bodies kill bodies and bodies

haunt bodies and sometimes bodies taunt

bodies and sometimes bodies search bodies

and sometimes those bodies are bloody

from the hoods where they’re buried in

blindness and sometimes bodies are bottled

into incarceration-hungry systems and some-

times systems kill bodies and sometimes

bodies suffocate and sometimes bodies

aren’t bodies when they’re killed and

erased and sometimes bodies are innocent

and mostly bodies are innocent and always

bodies are innocent and sometimes systems

are guilty and sometimes systems are guilty

and sometimes systems are guilty and often

systems are guilty and this system is guilty.

Ron Riekki co-edited Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice.

CAN'T BREATHE

by Lynn White

A protester is seen at the area where George Floyd, an unarmed black man, was pinned down by a police officer kneeling on his neck before later dying in hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S. May 26, 2020. Credit: REUTERS/Eric Miller

We are being suffocated
in this society
of masks and
miasmas,
of family connections
and corporate interests
smothering us
with hidden pillows of power
and corruption,
of prejudice
hardly hidden
in institutions
we thought would protect us all.

We are all George Floyd potentially
behind the mask.

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality and writes hoping to find an audience for her musings. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Peach Velvet, Light Journal and So It Goes.