Poems of Persistence, Solidarity, and Refuge – JP Howard

We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.  ― Gwendolyn Brooks  

As we journey through political, economic, and global health crises, we turn to poetry to share truths that unearth underlying causes, illuminate impacts, and insist on transformative change. For many of us, today’s challenges are not new. The struggle of isolation, economic insecurity, inadequate medical care, deadly institutionalized negligence, governmental decisions that put Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian, disabled, sick, and other structurally precarious people at greater risk are not new. Today, many more people are experiencing the vulnerability of these unrelenting issues. We recognize this opportunity for a heightened awareness of how our very survival depends on one another.

Poetry can help keep the flame of resilience, solidarity, and resistance alive in us. It can help us process and move through grief, anger, loneliness. Poetry can be a comfort when the most necessary actions are to rest and recover. It can remind us of what’s at stake, that our lives and legacy are worth the fight. As cultural workers, we know that culture shapes our political and social imagination at a foundational level. As poets, we can use poetry to map what is, what has been, and possibly, the way forward, including the reasons not to return to what does not honor and protect our lives, our communities, and our planet.

We asked poets to give us the words they chant to get out of bed, to raise their fists, to encourage their kin, to remind us, as this crisis does, that “we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.” To read all of these poems, visit Split This Rock’s website.

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If This is my Last poem

By JP Howard

If this is my last poem, let it be love

Let it be forgiveness and hallelujah and holy ghost and hell yeah 

wrapped in sparkling yarn

 

If this is my last poem, let it be a praise poem

Fill it with hope and joy and let it scream so fucking loud

that everybody in earshot will clap, clap clap, clap clap clap

 

If this is my last poem, stomp for the sound of my voice

Let this breath, this life, these full lips,

exhale 

 

If this is my last poem, hold it gently in your hands

Hand it around, grab hands y’all, 

Fold it into an origami blue jay and let her fly away

 

If this is my last poem, forgive it for loving too hard,

or not loving hard enough, or for wanting to be loved

more than it would admit

 

If this is my last poem, hold a mirror up to it,

say look how beautiful you are,

say, remember your reflection

Split This Rock · JP Howard If this is my last poem Audio

Listen as JP Howard reads "If This is my Last poem."

2017 Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism Celebration Honors Recipient Christopher Soto (aka Loma)

On Friday, April 21 at the Arts Club of Washington, Split This Rock presented the 2017 Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism, sponsored by the CrossCurrents Foundation, to Christopher Soto, aka Loma. The ceremony, cosponsored by the Arts Club of Washington, the Institute for Policy Studies, and Busboys and Poets, was an inspiring celebration that packed the house. 

Judged this year by Holly Bass, Dawn Lundy Martin, and 2015 Freedom Plow Award Recipient Mark Nowak, the 2017 award went to Christopher Soto, who was selected for his advocacy on behalf of undocumented writers and queer homeless youth and for supporting queer poets of color. Christopher offered an acceptance speech by video, as he had a prior commitment in Boulder, CO, meeting with the leaders of the Undocupoets Campaign, one of the initiatives for which he was selected. 

The three award finalists, Francisco Aragón, Andrea Assaf, and JP Howard, were also celebrated and each delivered memorable and poignant words as part of the award program, including poems!

The finalists are: 

Francisco Aragón for supporting and promoting Latinx poetry and poets:

Andrea Assaf for telling stories of the Arab-American experience and of US service members and Iraqis in the Iraq war:

 

and JP Howard aka Juliet P. Howard for building community among queer poets of color:

 

Additionally, the program included a welcome from Arts Club of Washington President Judith Nordin, opening remarks from Split This Rock Executive Director Sarah Browning, and words from CrossCurrents Foundation Chair Ken Grossinger. 

Jay Chavez, a member of Split This Rock’s Youth Programs, courageously helped open the event with a breathtaking poem about their mother’s experience immigrating to the United States. 

Visit YouTube to watch videos of the entire program. And check out photos from the event, all by Chelsea Iorlano, on Flickr.

Prior to presenting the award to Christopher Soto, Holly Bass delivered the following judges' statement:   
 

In his bio, Christopher Soto (aka Loma) describes himself as a “queer Latin@  punk poet and prison abolitionist.” Loma’s proclaimed identities challenge us to think about the seemingly incompatible inhabiting one body and working from that one body to write searing, critical poems that alter the impact of lived reality. 

In the prose poem, “Rework,” Loma writes:

[…]There was a manner by which the oppression was normalized; by which the feeling of liberation was long forgotten; by which everything revolved around capital. But you could no longer afford to stay in your father’s home. There was no rent control and some nights you thought that he would kill you in your sleep. Language is where the tongue fails itself over and over again[…]

This excerpt is much more than a traumatic personal narrative. The oppositional nature of things is laid bare: “oppression”/ “normal”; “oppression”/ “liberation”; “capital”/ “liberation”; “rent control”/ “capital”; “no rent control”/ “death.” Loma calls our attention to the impossibility of existence with the experience of trauma, and yet one survives. There is also an insistence on the failure of language in the face of these layers of lived experience. The poem is riddled with layers in which the incompatible happens simultaneously. And, how do we speak these things, the poem seems to ask, what words can struggle an approximation?

Christopher Soto’s multifarious work bridges the gap between literary activism and organizing, as the very poetry he writes is often investigative of the cultural and structural barriers of toxic masculinity, misogyny, heterosexism, racism, and xenophobic nationalism. In his literary activist work, Loma creates spaces for the intersection of identities to be expressive—such as in Nepantla: A Journal Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color, where Loma is editor. He is also a co-founder of the Undocupoets Campaign whose mission is to “promote the work of undocumented poets and raise consciousness about the structural barriers that are faced in the literary community [and to support] all poets, regardless of immigration status.”

We exist, as poets, in an era of egregious politics, an era where #MuslimBan and #BuildAWall flash across our iPhones built in China by other poets like Xu Lizhi, the 24^-year-old migrant factory worker who committed suicide by jumping out of a residential dormitory owned by his employer, Foxconn. Social media allows us to be anywhere at anytime, to trace social upheavals by hashtags, to be there from our living rooms.

The poet, the poem, the iPhone, the world… We’re all articulated within the “invisible-visibleness” of a Global north perpetually attempting to dominate the Global south. It’s a poetics (and an economics) of consumerism, migrant labor, and the deep loss of empathy and agency. And it’s a poetic response to these arenas that we find in Loma’s own poetry, dragging out the underbellies we refuse to look at unless we’re forced to look.

Of the many deeply engaged poets who were nominated for the Freedom Plow Award, we have chosen Christopher Soto as this year’s winner. It was far from an easy decision. What is happening in the United States at this moment has re-energized a bounty of magnificent projects to address the almost daily injustices that flash across lighted screens. The assaults upon the environment, our bodies, who we choose to love and how we choose to live and where we choose to sell our labor power. These and so many more areas of our lives are seemingly under attack at the present moment. And we were deeply heartened by the many, many poets currently working against these assaults.

One of these poets, Christopher Soto, inspires us with the depth and variety of his engagements. In addition to his work with the Undocupoets Campaign, he has helped to establish Amazon Literary Partnership grants for undocumented writers. These fearless and necessary contributions, defiant in the face of Trump-era hatred and bigotry, make Loma a model Freedom Plow citizen. We are pleased to grant him this award on behalf of Split This Rock.

The ceremony concluded with these moving words from Christopher Soto:

We are grateful to the Arts Club of Washington for hosting the awards celebration again this year. Our thanks especially go out to Sandra Beasley, Judith Nordin, and Yann Henrotte for their help and hospitality. We extend our deep appreciation as well to all the Freedom Plow sponsors, Upshur Street Books and Anna Thorn as the event book seller, ASL interpreter Billy Sanders, Skies The Limit Entertainment for videotaping the ceremony, Grace Toulotte of United by Love Design, and all of the Split This Rock interns and staff.

We look forward to honoring the innovative work of activist poets again in 2019!

Interview with JP Howard aka Juliet P. Howard, 2017 Freedom Plow Award Finalist!

The Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism, sponsored by the CrossCurrents Foundation and co-sponsored by the Arts Club of Washington, Busboys and Poets, and the Institute for Policy Studies, recognizes and honors a poet or poetry collective doing innovative and transformative work at the intersection of poetry and social change. The award, judged this year by Holly Bass, Dawn Lundy Martin, and 2015 award recipient Mark Nowak, is being given for the third time in 2017. Tickets now on sale! Join us on April 21 at the Arts Club of Washington for the Award Ceremony!

ABOUT JP HOWARD AKA JULIET P. HOWARD

JP Howard aka Juliet P. Howard is the author of SAY/MIRROR, a debut poetry collection published by The Operating System (2016, 2nd expanded ed. and 2015, 1st ed) and a chaplet bury your love poems here (Belladonna Collaborative*, 2015). SAY/MIRROR was a 2016 Lambda Literary Award Finalist in the Lesbian Poetry Category. JP is a Pushcart Prize nominee and was selected as a 2016 Judith Markowtiz Emerging Writers Award Winner from Lambda Literary Foundation. She was one of Velvetpark Magazine's Official 25 Queer Women of 2016 and was selected as one of GO Magazine's 2016 "100 Women We Love!"

JP curates and nurtures Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon (WWBPS), a forum offering women writers at all levels a monthly venue to come together in a positive and supportive space. The Salon, which has been featured in Poets & Writers Magazine, celebrates a diverse array of women poets and includes a large LGBTQ POC membership.  

JP is a Cave Canem graduate fellow, an alumna of the VONA/Voices Writers Workshop, and a Lambda Literary Foundation Emerging LGBT Voices Fellow. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Queer Voices Anthology, Apogee Journal, The Feminist Wire, Split This Rock's blog, Nepantla: A Journal for Queer Poets of Color, Muzzle Magazine, Adrienne: A Poetry Journal of Queer Women, The Best American Poetry Blog, MiPOesias, Mom Egg Review, Talking Writing, Connotation Press and the anthology, Stand Our Ground: Poems for Trayvon Martin and Marissa Alexander. She is Editor-at-Large for Mom Egg Review.

JP holds a BA from Barnard College, a JD from Brooklyn Law School and an MFA in Creative Writing from the City College of New York. She resides in New York with her wife and two sons. Her family was proudly featured on a 2014 cover of Gay Parent Magazine.

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SPLIT THIS ROCK INTERVIEWS JP HOWARD AKA JULIET P. HOWARD

By Fran McCrae

How would you describe the role of poetry in activism and community building?

As a queer poet of color, I am especially aware and appreciative of the long-standing history of black lesbian poets who have used poetry as a form of activism and as a way to both agitate and empower. Poetry for me is part and parcel of activism and community building. I'm thinking particularly of black lesbian poets, Pat Parker, Audre Lorde, and Cheryl Clarke. Discovering their voices while in college helped me to to understand the clear intersection of poetry, activism, and community building. They wrote about racism, feminism, the beauty and sexiness of loving women, and consistently used their poetry to speak truth to power. They made it crystal clear that poetry is political and that poets can and should use poetry to bring community together.

Modern day political movements like #BlackPoetsSpeakOut, follow in the great literary tradition of black activist poets and allow black poets and our allies to use the power of our words to march, chant, write, build, and empower community, both nationally and internationally.
 
What poets have most influenced you and why?

I grew up in Sugar Hill, Harlem, and as an only child of a single Mama, I spent countless hours afterschool in my local library, the Hamilton Grange Branch of the NY public library. It was really my home away from home.

Early poets who influenced me way back in elementary and middle school include Nikki Giovanni, Langston Hughes, Margaret Walker, Lucille Clifton, and Sonia Sanchez. I discovered The Black Poets Anthology edited by Dudley Randall in the poetry section of my local library and it became my poetry bible. I checked it out of the library so much, that my Mama went out and got me my own copy.

Later on in college, black lesbian activist poets who I mentioned above (Pat Parker, Audre Lorde and Cheryl Clarke) had the most significant influence on me personally, politically, and socially. They literally gave me the courage to come and stay out of the closet over thirty years ago. I continue to call out their names and celebrate their work. 

What was your defining moment in becoming a poet-activist? 

A poem that I loved and memorized when I was back in elementary school, For My People, by the dynamic sista poet, Margaret Walker, was an early defining moment for me. Her poetry showed me, at a very young age, that a writer could be both a poet and an activist. I may not have had the word “activist” in my vocabulary at that age, but I remember that Walker’s poetry made me feel alive.

For My People educated the reader about African American history (both painful and empowering moments), while simultaneously serving as a call to action for black folks. When I reread For My People, as an adult, I remembered that I had always loved this poem on a visceral level, before I fully understood its power or all its social implications. I was probably no more than nine or ten years old and my Mama would proudly have me recite it each Sunday to the church ladies after church.

Before discovering poetry, I was a painfully shy child. However, that particular poem, really spoke to me and helped me find and share my voice. I loved the rhythm of the words and how strong my voice sounded when I performed it. It made me stand tall because of the force and power of the words. The church ladies would clap each week and I’d smile each time, then run and get a warm slice of sweet potato pie. I still love that final stanza, a call for action, that still speaks true today:

        Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a
        bloody peace be written in the sky. Let a second
        generation full of courage issue forth; let a people
        loving freedom come to growth. Let a beauty full of
        healing and a strength of final clenching be the pulsing
        in our spirits and our blood. Let the martial songs
        be written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now
        rise and take control.

Your collection SAY/MIRROR takes its inspiration from vintage photographs of your mother. How would you describe the potential of poetry to impact collective memory?

Poetry can sometimes be a trigger and here I’m using the word “ trigger” as a tool: poems can get our collective attention, remind us of our history (both political and personal), and encourage political activism.

While there can be collective power and beauty in poetry, there can also be collective pain and mourning. This is particularly true when we remember/honor/start a literal “roll call” of names of our black, brown, and LGBTQ bodies that have been murdered or maimed, seemingly without any justice in sight. Poetry ensures that we don’t forget the growing list of names as we seek justice for our ancestors and our injured, who have been targets of racism, homophobia, transphobia, and discrimination based on immigration status. Poetry forces us to pay attention; to look this sometimes ugly country directly in the eye and call it on its flaws.

Sometimes poetry can give us unexpected hope. Recently I participated in a Poets Vigil for NEA at Trump Tower in New York City organized by my friend Loma (Christopher Soto).  Poets and allies were on the street protesting and local poets shared our poems of protest. A bus driver driving his bus along Fifth Avenue, saw and heard our vigil of protester poets, with our signs, placards, and candles. He pulled his bus over towards us, looked over in our direction from his drivers side window, gave us a big thumbs up and honked his horn loudly in support, while encouraging us to keep it up. Strangers on the street stopped, listened, and many clapped or shared supportive words of solidarity. Ultimately, it was a beautiful and empowering experience (though freezing outside) as we bonded over our shared activist experience; that evening became a part of our collective memory. 

Being a woman, a person of color, and a member of the LGBTQ community, you are able to channel many voices in your work. How do these communities intersect in your writing and what are the challenges of representing them all?

It is basically impossible for these voices/parts of myself, black, queer and woman, not to enter my work or intersect. It frames the lens through which I see and experience the world and it is part and parcel of who I am.

When I am writing poems celebrating or mourning black youth, I am writing as a black lesbian mother of two sons, including one queer teen. When I write political poems, the various parts of myself intersect and inevitably speak up. I want others in the room who may be too shy to speak up, to know that we are here, we queer POC voices exist and we will speak out as long as there is breath in our bodies.

I’m constantly thinking about a quote of one of my favorite poets, the late black, lesbian, activist poet, Pat Parker, who once said: "If I could take all my parts with me when I go somewhere, and not have to say to one of them, 'No, you stay home tonight, you won’t be welcome…' The day all the different parts of me can come along, we would have what I would call a revolution."

I am fully aware that all those parts of me (black, queer, woman), all those voices are not welcome in some forums simultaneously, but that never stops me from making my best efforts to bring “all the different parts of me” and to bring my fullest, queerest, blackest, full woman self into the room, onto the page, up on the stage, and in my role as curator and educator.
 
You curate and nurture the Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon (WWBPS). How does this forum support women writers?

WWBPS supports primarily women writers (though we are open to everyone) by hosting monthly writing workshops with a new featured woman poet/writer/author monthly. Each month featured Salon writers are paid honoraria thanks to donations and my Brooklyn Arts Council Grant (BAC), awarded the last four years. Our workshops are pay-what-you-can and there’s no required fee, though donations are always welcome.

The Salons occur on weekends and we have a four to five hour leisurely chunk of time to produce new work, have a featured reading by our visiting author, and a Q & A session with our feature. We wrap up with a multi-genre open mic, open to all participants. We celebrate our powerful voices, while producing new work, thanks to generous women who open their homes to us each month or help me find affordable community spaces. WWBPS literally and figuratively nurtures us; Salons are potluck events and participants bring delicious home-cooked meals.

Women who attend often tell me that the Salons are warm, welcoming, and safe spaces to create new work and to share works-in-progress during the open mic. Recently, some Salon members have been accepted into MFA programs across the country, others are getting their work published in journals, often for the first time, some have their first chapbooks or books published or forthcoming, many are getting accepted into residencies or writing retreats. Some, who were once shy, now perform their poetry in larger venues, after building up their confidence in our open mics.

The Salon has become an extended poetry family, where members support each other on an ongoing basis, even outside of the Salon, networking and building community. We are an incredibly diverse and intergenerational group of writers, many of us are queer POC and allies, as are many of our features. We learn from each other, as well as from our featured authors, who are often dynamic educators. Featured poets are invited to sell their books at each Salon, thereby supporting small, independent presses.

Thanks to my Brooklyn Arts Council grants, I started a traveling Salon poetry library a few years ago. My 2017 BAC Grant allows me to stock the library with new poetry books throughout the year, often from LGBTQ and POC writers, thereby exposing members to diverse, emerging poetic voices.

What has been your most memorable experience within the WWBPS?

One of my most memorable WWBPS experiences was when we performed in front of a full house at the renowned Word for Word Reading Series at Bryant Park in New York City last summer. It was really a dream come true, as that reading series has been one of my favorite series for many years! I was interviewed on behalf of WWBPS, along with Salon member Keisha-Gaye Anderson, and portions of our Bryant Park performances were featured on CUNY-TV’s Study With the Best cable tv show. 

What’s coming up next for you? Any new projects in the works? 

As for my writing, I’m in the early stages of writing my memoir and recently finished taking a memoir writing workshop with the amazing Bushra Rehman, so I have lots of editing to do. I’m editing my poetry chapbook manuscript, “We Beautiful Black Boys.” My literary baby, WWBPS celebrates its Six Year Anniversary on Friday, April 28th with a phenomenal line-up of Salon poets performing! I’ve rented a lovely space and am catering it so I’m super excited.

I’m especially looking forward to some upcoming collaborations with various community and literary organizations. I’m currently the guest editor, with poet Amber Atiya, of a special edition of Sinister Wisdom Journal entitled “Black Lesbians: We Are the Revolution!” (influenced by who else? Pat Parker!) It’s forthcoming in the latter part of 2017; we are busy making final selections and edits.

Apogee Journal and New York Writers Coalition recently received a 2017 Community Arts Grant from the Brooklyn Arts Council to design and facilitate affordable craft-based writing and editing workshops.  I’ve been invited to facilitate one of their generative writing workshops as a teaching artist for this new series. My workshop will use the brilliant texts of Audre Lorde and James Baldwin to help writers create powerful mini-personal essays or narrative, memoir-themed political poems.

I’m partnering with Humanities New York and have been invited to serve as a Readings and Discussions Scholar to create an inaugural Audre Lorde Readings and Discussion statewide program in NY for them. Of course, I’m always busy lining up featured authors for the Salon; some upcoming 2017 featured poets include Antoinette Brim, Donika Kelly, DeLana Dameron, Cheryl Boyce-Taylor, Anastacia Renee, and Heather Buchanan, plus others!

What advice would you give to emerging writers from underrepresented groups (people of color, LGBTQ, etc.)? 

I would urge emerging writers from underrepresented groups (folks of colors, LGBTQ, and marginalized writers) to find and build a writing community wherever you are. This can include reaching out to local writers, to friends who are writers or even an online community of writers, particularly for folks in rural communities without easy access to queer POC writers or allies.

I also encourage emerging writers to apply to organizations that specifically support and celebrate their communities, such as Cave Canem, Lambda Literary, VONA/Voices Writing Workshop for Writers of Color, CantoMundo, and Kundiman. Many of those organizations, including Cave Canem, Lambda, and VONA, have really provided a nurturing space for me to grow as a writer throughout the years.

It’s also important to go to readings, meet and hear other poets, and if folks can, attend local affordable writing workshops when offered. Also read everything you can get your hands on! 

Learn more about JP at her website.

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Fran McCrae is a poet, advocate for the cooperative model of business, and volunteer for Split This Rock. She hails from the Texas Hill Country and currently lives in Washington, DC. Her work has previously been published in Epigraph Magazine and Burnt Pine Magazine.

Poems that Resist Police Brutality & Demand Racial Justice - Post #12

We Who Believe in Freedom Cannot Rest -  Poems that Resist Police Brutality & Demand Racial Justice

Until the killing of Black men, Black mothers' sons, becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a white mother's son -- we who believe in freedom cannot rest.
                    - Ella Baker

Even as our hearts break in rage and anguish over the murder of Black and brown people throughout the land by police who are not held accountable, here at Split This Rock we are heartened by the powerful actions in the streets and the visionary leadership of mostly young people of color in this growing movement for justice.

We are also moved by the poets, who continue to speak out, and especially by BlackPoetsSpeakOut.

In solidarity, Split This Rock offers our blog as a Virtual Open Mic, open to all who respond to our call for Poems that Resist Police Brutality and Demand Racial Justice. The poems below were submitted in response to that call.

Please note poems with complex formatting have been posted as jpegs, as this blog has a limited capacity for properly displaying these poems. We apologize if these poems are not accessible to you.

For more information or questions, feel free to email us at info@splitthisrock.org.

If you are moved by any of the poems below, please contact the Department of Justice and your local representatives to demand for police accountability. Visit Ferguson Action Demands for more information.

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I Can’t Breathe Either

by Gregory Luce

in this blue-white air

on the white sidewalk.

Time for a white [privilege] sale:

wrap it up in yellow tape

shove it into a chalk outline

use the proceeds to buy up

the bullets and nightsticks

and turn them into buttons

and furniture and toys.

****

The American mythology

by Chandramohan S

After dark

Black boys are perceived as 

danger to society,

like 

the rage of a colorblind

Oxen at the sight of crimson.

****

Animal

by Derick Ebert

Hunters will set up blinds

In woods

So the prey

Being hunted

Will get used to what seems foreign.

I wonder

If they know their getting used to

Their killer

We are accustomed

As ammo aimed

At angels

Assimilating

All around

Us

Cops

Will patrol cities

So the civilians

Feel safe

Within the community,

Although the ones

Protecting you,

Look nothing like you,

I wonder

If they know their getting use to

Their killer

Born beautiful,

Blackness battles back

Bad behavior,

But bloody background

Bottles black bodies

Because bullets blast

Brothers being broken

By beast bearing blue

That’s a lot of B’s

But bear with me

If life is a game,

And we are its game

Then who the hell

Are the hunters?

The ones with guns,

And a disguise

That pledges

Red,

White,

And blue

Wanting to see us bleed red

Our shooter white,

And our hands go blue

African Americans

Assaulted

Altered

As animals

Black boys,

Bruised, by

Brutality

And I know

I said I would stop with the damn B’s

But after B comes C

Like

I C coffins

Carrying colored

Carcasses

Before bodies

Are in them

I guess,

Killing blacks are as

Easy as

A

B

C

See like

Dark fruit is nice

But police

Would rather see the juice

Spilling from your veins

It makes me realize,

That I don’t want to be

Good at math

I don’t want to be good

At making a statistic

But what

Else can

We expect

When the city

Is an equation

And we

Are the problem

They are desperately

Trying to solve

While their son’s backs

Meet beds

In the middle of the night

My brother’s backs

Meet

Pavement

So don’t ask me

How’s it feel to paint the town red

Cause I know souls

That can tell you

You dream of Freddy

Or Jason chasing you

I dream of running

From cops

To stay alive

The only difference

Is that

When I wake up

Those dreams

Still follow

Me

Down dark streets,

Into gated communities,

And even to my own front porch

PETA loves protecting endangered animals

So when will

Someone protect

Endangered

Black children

When will

I

Be given

My rights

Instead of having

Them read to me

Instead of tattooing pieces

Of paper

To write poems

About problems

You know exist

We use ink

To draw

Legislation

Because you can find peace in heart

By making pieces of art

The word unity

Has been replaced by prison

So the community

Has no value

Just common

Traits of jails

And no

I have never been there

Nor has Eric Garner,

Or Michael Brown

Or Jonathan Garret

Names,

Lost in translation

Because police

Don’t speak

English

When we say innocent

With hands pointed towards the sky

Like we want God to take us

Before the bullet does

But it’s bigger than that,

Bigger than a few names.

We make profit off these prophecies

Like we did with Trayvon

When will we be with the movement

And not the moment

Like when I leave my house,

It’s like I’m going to another cell block,

Constantly being watched

When did looking like a criminal

And being one

Become the exact same thing

Cause if I stray too far

From my boundaries

You’ll find-these

Eyes

Closed

In a casket

I don’t know when I will die

But Take a picture

It’ll last longer than

The life expectancy

Of black children

In the city

So when you hold the barrel

Of your lens at their face

Like the crater

You are aiming at can

Swallow bullets just like

It swallows

Air

Ever second sirens

Blare

Just remind them

To smile

Cause if they gunned me down,

What picture would they use of me?

Would they make me look like an animal?

Or who I actually am?

****

Police Raid the Show Under the Bridge, May 2012

by Karen Lillis

From high ground, I watched you surrender to a ladycop
while two young women were pushed to the asphalt
and roughly cuffed, hands behind their backs.
More uniforms were chasing the guitar player across Liberty Ave
while some copper shoved the comedian towards the paddy wagon
and the accordionist was folded into the back of the squad car
with his squeezebox still strapped across his ribcage.

Moments before,
we’d been folk dancing
among the bike punx and the straight edge
and I wondered what was more perfectly Pittsburgh:
shimmying to a Balkan brass band under a midnight bridge
in a full moon glow on May Day
or the VU cover band we’d seen the previous evening
Andy Warhol smirking down from his grave
How does it feeeel
to be loooooved?

Three songs into Balkan gypsy,
bright headlights flashed on, and I knew.
Cops, baby, let’s GO. I thought you were right
behind me, but I was mistaken. Instead,
the cops had cops behind them. Quick on the heels
of the first car, two more cars drove up, then two more, then two
more, then two more, so fast and so many that I could no longer count.
I wondered what terrible crime they thought
they were responding to. I wondered
what actual crime they were missing
by raining down on the music lovers
after park curfew.

It looked like a scene
out of West Side Story or Jungleland–
a cliché decades out of date.
Only, the Sharks were the cops and their K9s
and the Jets weren’t fighting back.
The Sharks said: WALK AWAY. Walk Away Faster.
You’re Coming With Us. Who’s in Charge Here?
You Fucking Idiots Are Going to Jail. I Don’t Have
to Give A Fucking Warning. Everybody Stay Here.
GO. GO NOW. Back Up or Get Pepper Sprayed. Tell
Your Friends I Could Shoot Them All If I Wanted To.
I’m Going to Bash Her Fucking Head In. WALK AWAY,
MISTER. Sit down on the curb and put your hands up.
What the Jets said to land themselves 26 hours in county jail:
Stop, You’re Hitting My Friend Too Rough.

Before I left you for the night
I yelled, “I LOVE YOUUUUUU!”
from up high on the bridge behind the chain link
to you breathless below on the sidewalk
and then I really felt like Maria
or Marlon Brando.
Sirens continued screaming in your direction
as I ran uphill to our house
to sleep alone.

Nine arrests, 31 citations, and a few weeks later
the Zone Commander invited us
for a de-escalating chat at the Precinct.
He told us he grew up in the South Hills, a young thug
turning over cars, finding trouble, trading fisticuffs
with the local police.
Tent said it as we drove away: The cops and the criminals,
they’re just two sides of the same rotten coin. But us freaks,
we’re the ones they really hate—people who still think
for themselves, people who don’t play their games, people
who keep asking the persistent questions.

****

The Muse is Marvin

by Rebecca Villarreal

with gratitude to Marvin Gaye

What’s going on?

What’s going on?

Marvin serenaded the mothers

too many of us crying

last words separated by six degrees

open palms

manos arriba

these are suns

these are our sons

Om Shanti

feel it at the base of your spine

Sanskrit

Iyanla invites

forgive everyone for everything

undo angels

undo hairs on end

fashion forward fear

ask the family for a bowl of soup

in it read your fortune

someone gave birth to him

someone gave birth to you

only your mama’s not crying

brother, brother, brother

there’s far too many of you dying

we’ve got to find a way.

****

Know Justice, Know Peace

by Anna Laura Grant

“No justice, no peace!”

“No justice, no peace!”

I join the chorus of protest marching down DC’s streets,    

surrounded by others who are angry, ashamed and awakened

by the heartbreak, hurt and hatred

choking our country.  

I look at a mother’s eyes,

I hear her cries and empathize.

What can we do to save these lives?

So many victims of brutality,

children being killed  ‘cause they don’t look like me.

I breathe deep. I pray for an answer.

And it comes.

I think if there’s hope for our society,   

the change must start individually.

We’ve got to k-n-know justice  

for peace to be a possibility.

So what does it mean, this justice?

It was time for an exploration, seeking a philosophical explanation.

and I knew just who to ask…

My intellectual curiosity

led me to a fellow teacher who explained to me,

“You see, Ms. Grant the ancients believed

true justice existed in the midst of harmony,

creating foundations of our morality.

-wisdom

-courage

-self-control

Pillars forever outside of man,

yet inside of man,

architecture for our humanity.”

So, if these are balanced within us, there is hope for peace.

It starts with you.

Make it right within,

then look around and see.

There’s more that connects us than you thought originally.

So instead of referring to an Other,

I call you sister, neighbor, brother.

I honor your history.     

I respect your religion.

I admire your age.

I learn your language.

I celebrate your skin.

Your heart still beats like mine.

You’ve got a soul divine.

And so I see how you are me,

and I am you.

Injustice to you affects my harmony,

an intimately intertwined human destiny.

Though at times we may disagree,       

what happens to you matters to me.

Because sister,            

neighbor,

brother,

we are one.

Now if the police could think like me,       

would there be a more peaceful society?      

Then justice would “roll down

like mighty waters,”

taking over hearts.

We’d become humanized,

with human eyes.

You see?

Change the individual and you change the world.    

So in this season of love and contemplation,

Become the hope in the face of tribulation.

I challenge you…

to see each other as connected human souls.

to find beauty, truth and goodness inside us all,

hidden as it may be.     

Then you’ll KNOW justice and KNOW peace,  

allowing human love to release       

inside of you,

inside of me,

filling our hearts and

twisting separations into coexisting fate.

And when a heart is full of Love,

there is not room for hate.       

****

Reverse Garland Cinquain for Trayvon

by JP Howard

Trayvon

I wish I didn't have to write

about you in past tense

once again, so

unfair

Trayvon

your story is too familiar

we keep returning here

this pain should not

recur

Trayvon

Today you should be in your school

Your parents’ next visit

should not be your

gravestone

Trayvon

Until there is justice I will

wrap you in my stanzas

cradle your name

Trayvon

Trayvon

we will not forget your trip home

beautiful son man-child

let us repeat

your name

Trayvon

Your story is so familiar

When your parents’ visit

let them cradle

your name.

*Reverse Garland Cinquain for Trayvon was initially published The Best American Poetry Blog in February 2013: http://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2013/02/in-memoriam-a-reverse-garland-for-trayvon-martin.html

****

Pantoum Chant For Ferguson:  20 Miles a Day
by Angela Consolo Mankiewicz

The marchers march on, twenty miles a day

to Jefferson City, the latest Selma.

They trudge through the years, they know the way

from fifty years past, twenty more miles

to Jefferson City, the latest Selma.

Where will we be - who will we be

in fifty more years? After twenty more miles,

child of today, what will you see?

Where will we be? Who will we be?

Dreamers redeemed? Roads without lives without sticks without stones?

Or, child of today, is what you will see 

the night chanting names on slicked over roads

trudging through years, knowing the way;

still dreaming and marching, twenty miles a day.

****

Black Lives Matter

by Papi Kymone Freeman

Black lives matter when we shopping, in other people's stores
Black lives matter when we singing and dancing
Black lives matter on the basketball court
Black lives matter on the football field, until you get carried off the field
Black lives matter when they in uniform
Black lives matter in private prisons
Black lives matter in the boxing ring
Black lives matter when slaves were sold
But it don’t mean a thing at the wrong end of a white cop’s gun
Or choke hold
Cause then, black lives don’t matter
Forensic pathologist expert testimony don’t matter
Unconstitutional statues hand fed to hand picked grand jury don’t matter
A community of witnesses don’t matter
Being unarmed don’t matter
Videotaped murder don’t matter
A Black attorney general don’t matter
A Black president don’t matter
No justice no indictment no remorse no revenge In a system that pretends that #BlackLivesMatter