Poem of the Week: Kevin Simmonds

                                  

a sentence        

  

needs

at least one subject

and one verb

(though sometimes the subject

is unnamed it's understood

nevertheless

objects must be named)

...........Johannes Mehserle shot Oscar Grant III.

subject: Johannes Mehserle

verb: shot

object: Oscar Grant III

a sentence becomes sophisticated

when it includes complexity and detail

...........Johannes Mehserle shot Oscar Grant III who was restrained faced ..............down

           on the ground surrounded by three police officers.

subject: Johannes Mehserle

verb: shot

object: Oscar Grant III

...........A white police officer shot a black man faced down on the ground

           and will spend less than two years in jail for his criminal conviction.

what is the object

of that sentence?

object? anyone?

  

-Kevin Simmonds           

   

Used by permission.

 

Kevin Simmonds is a San Francisco-based writer, musician and filmmaker originally from New Orleans. His books include the poetry collection Mad for Meat and two edited works: the poetry anthology Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion & Spirituality and the late poet Carrie Allen McCray's Ota Benga under My Mother's Roof. He wrote the music for the Emmy Award-winning documentary Hope: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica and Voices of Haiti: A Post-Quake Odyssey in Verse, both commissioned by the Pulitzer Center. His genre-defying films, including feti(sh)ame and Singing Whitman, have screened internationally.

 

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