Friday, April 27, 2012

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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1 comment:

Joseph Ross said...

This is a terrific poem, by a terrific poet. Sadly, we keep getting names to add to this "sentence." Thanks to Kevin Simmonds for writing it so truthfully.