Poem of the Week: Brian Gilmore

philadelphia (for d.j. renegade, 

ta-nehisi coates, darrell stover from landover,
and the prison writers, lorton reformatory)

"history will absolve me ..."

--fidel castro

like fidel after raiding

moncada barracks

we face history like
seed removed from
soil

no longer waiting on
america

our eyes open now
curtains on tropical
sunday mornings 

peering over horizons
around corners
desperately seeking road
that leads to
sierra maestra

until then
 

pens must move like
scalpels

slice through layers of

lament

challenge headlines

handed down through

history

that which forces us to gather

here, though even outside these

walls we are linked: gravity to earth

needle to thread, each of us

free beyond barbed wire

and bricks, spill our souls on

these floors, like scattered 

pieces of puzzles.

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From We Didn't Know Any Gangsters (Cherry Castle Publishing, 2014).

Used with permission.

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Brian Gilmore is a poet, writer, public interest attorney, and columnist with the Progressive Media Project. He is a Cave Canem Fellow (1997), Kimbilio Fellow (2014), Literature Fellow for the D.C. Commission on Arts and Humanities (1997), Pushcart Prize nominee (2007), and winner of the Maryland State Arts Council's Individual Artist Award (2001 and 2003). Gilmore has been a contributing writer for Ebony-Jet.com, and JazzTimes Magazine. He is the author of three collections of poetry: elvis presley is alive and well and living in harlem, Jungle Nights and Soda Fountain Rags: Poem for Duke Ellington & the Duke Ellington Orchestra and his latest We Didn't Know Any Gangsters. His poems and writings are widely published and have appeared in The Progressive, The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, and many other publications. He teaches law at the Michigan State University College of Law, where he lectures and writes on contemporary issues relating to housing and economic inequality, dividing his time between Michigan and Washington, D.C. 

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