The Quarry's Top 10 Most-Viewed Poems of 2017

In 2017, readers turned most often to ten poems that affirm our humanity, mourn our wounds and loss, and that speak to us of reunion and joyful rebellion.

We are delighted to present the ten most-viewed poems published in Split This Rock’s social justice poetry database, The Quarry, in 2017. They represent this country’s greatest strength – the variety of our residents' backgrounds and the clarifying views they offer on living this human and troubled American life. In 2017 the all-time most read poems changed to the top two poems of 2017. Previously the All Time Number 1 Poem was Ross Gay’s “A Small Needful Fact,”and still holds at Number 3 since The Quarry went online. You may read previous collections of most-viewed poems on Blog This Rock.

Many of these top ten poems also happen to connect to Split This Rock’s history and directly to our work in 2017. Amanda Gorman, the first US Youth Poet Laureate, offered her inaugural poem for Poem of the Week. Melissa Tuckey is a co-founder of the organization, and the poems by Keno Evol, Purvi Shah, and Keith Wilson all placed in the Sonia Sanchez-Langston Hughes Poetry Contest in 2017.  Richard Blanco featured at Richard Blanco featured at Split This Rock’s fifth anniversary celebration, and Aracelis Girmay featured at the poetry festival in 2016. Both of their poems were part of a special portfolio edition of Poem of the Week published on inauguration day 2017.

Kazim Ali will feature at this year’s Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness in Washington, DC from April 19 through April 21, along with Elizabeth Acevedo, Kazim Ali, Ellen Bass, Sherwin Bitsui, Kwame Dawes, Camille Dungy, Ilya Kaminsky, Sharon Olds, Sonia Sanchez, Solmaz Sharif, Terisa Siagatonu, Paul Tran, Javier Zamora! We do hope you can join us. Early bird rates are available until February 23! Visit Split This Rock's website for details.

2017’s most-viewed poems run the gamut from mourning to celebration. These poems mourn our distance from the future world we deserve. These poems provoke us to embrace and behold each other. These poems witness the way to a future we know is possible. That future is a social world organized with our dignity at its center. That future ennobles us, lets us live in cooperation with nature, in our varied and glorious bodies, sustained by the many shapes and textures of our love. That future lets us share stories and languages and practices, lets us share all of them knowing they will be honored for the sacred inheritance they are.

In these ten poems, and all the poems of The Quarry, we can hear intimations of the future we mean to live, we can hear her warm breath singing full-throated and ready.

  

1   Declaration of Interdependence, by Richard Blanco

2   YOU ARE WHO I LOVE, by Aracelis Girmay

3   Do You Speak Persian, by Kaveh Akbar

4   Politics of an Elegy, by Hieu Mihn Nguyen

5   In This Place (An American Lyric), by Amanda Gorman

6   Shooting for the Sky, by Purvi Shah

7   Requiem, Melissa Tuckey

8   Peach, by Kazim Ali

9   Black Matters, by Keith Wilson

10 On Meeting a Brother for the First Time, by Keno Evol

We invite readers to find these poem in The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database, along with their 475-plus kin, to find in these poems the sense of belonging that fuels the long work of resistance and imagination. The poems are searchable by social justice theme and indexed to encourage discovery.

We hear of the poems being used by teachers in classrooms, for writing workshops, in vigils, performances, worship services, and more! The poems are traveling the country and the world with their witness and their provocation. Everywhere these poems are read, they insist that the beloved community Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of is not a lost idea and that our path to a just and thriving world begins with seeing each other clearly, with generous vision.

In Split This Rock’s tenth anniversary year, we are firming up plans to expand The Quarry’s reach even further, so it continues to function not only as a repository of excellent poetry, but as an active tool for those who seek to make justice present in our time. We’re always open to innovative ideas from Splitistas– for organizing, teaching, worship, reflection. Email your story of using The Quarry to info@splitthisrock.org.

M. F. Simone Roberts
Managing Editor of The Quarry
Split This Rock Poetry & Social Justice Fellow

The Quarry's 10 Most Viewed Poems of 2016

As The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database turns two years old, we’re thrilled to reflect on trends related to The Quarry’s use and share the top 10 poems most viewed in 2016. From its inception until December 31, 2016, The Quarry was viewed 106, 607 times. That’s over 3 times as many visits as reported last year in August. 

We hear of the poems being used by teachers in classrooms, for writing workshops, in vigils, performances, worship services, and more! The poems are traveling the country and the world with their witness and their provocation, their mourning, their love. 

We look forward to creatively expanding The Quarry’s reach even further, so it continues to function not only as a repository of excellent poetry, but as an active tool for those who seek to make justice present in our time. Towards that end, we’d love to hear ways you’ve used it – for organizing, teaching, worship, reflection. Email your story to info@splitthisrock.org.

We offer you the 10 poems in The Quarry most viewed in 2016, as inspiration to fuel further action. We celebrate the fact that all ten poems are by poets of color, as is the most viewed poem in The Quarry from its inception in June, 2015 to December 31, 2016: Ross Gay’s “A Small Needful Fact.”

You’ll see some familiar titles on this year’s list if you compare it with one we posted in 2016. In honor of The Quarry turning one, we posted a list last year of the poems most often viewed in its first year, which spanned two years. This year’s list offers a spotlight for poems most viewed and published in 2016. We'll be tracking numbers by calendar year from now on.

About the Most Viewed Poems of 2016

The poems readers turned to most often in 2016 were poems that addressed the dangers our communities face with tremendous compassion, with tenderness, with fierce insistence on staying alive. In 2016, you visited these poems in The Quarry 10,678 times!

The 2016 list tells us readers have been thinking about the complex ways our genders are perceived, how our sexualities are too often policed, about the longing and anger inspired by America’s demands for assimilation, the ways that white supremacists impose and do violence. But these poems all share another theme: they testify to the resilience and resistance of our communities, to their generous and unrelenting imagination. 

Through the top 10 poems and the readers who have given them their care and attention, we know that the trouble roving the land now is not new, is not unique, is not even terribly original in its dreams and tactics. Even its courage, its aggression is not new. It is the same trouble that social justice work has always challenged and imagined a way beyond. 

But, many people in this country find themselves newly attuned to this old, destructive trouble. It is not only these newly "woke" citizens who feel the pressure, the weird loneliness of living in this trouble and finding the courage to act for the good. 

Hannah Arendt taught us that the one greatest tool of totalitarian regimes is isolation and its effect is loneliness. Even in this totally connected age, it's possible to feel (again, and again) abandoned, cornered, isolated. Poetry and poets have long sung to us the truth, and the truth told with clarity dispels that loneliness in each stanza.

The most-viewed poems of 2016 serve as a cure for that oppressive loneliness. Those who hope for our surrender will find, as we do in each of these poems, that they are wrong. We are powerful, and courageous, and we see each other.

Let us revel in these 10 most viewed poems of 2016 from The Quarry (beginning with the most viewed poem of 2016):

1. How To Enjoy Your Vacation To A Country That Says It Won The War by Gowri Koneswaran
2. I Don't Know Any Longer Why the Flags Are At Half-Staff by Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib
3. america by Fatimah Asghar
4. Your Rapist is on Paid Administrative Leave by Tafisha A. Edwards
5. The Transkid Explains Gentrification, Explains Themselves by Taylor Johnson
6. There Is a Lake Here by Clint Smith
7. origin stories (reprise) by Safia Elhillo
8. The Hour Dylann Roof Sat In The Church by Denice Frohman
9. #flyingwhileblack by Imani Cezanne
10. Too Pretty by Sunu P. Chandy

* * * * * *

M. F. Simone Roberts is the Poetry & Social Justice Fellow for Split This Rock where she co-curates and manages The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database. Roberts is an independent scholar of poetics and feminist phenomenology, a poet, editor, and activist. She is co-editor of the anthology Iris Murdoch and the Moral Imagination: Essays and author of the critical monograph A Poetics of Being-Two: Irigaray's Ethics and Post-Symbolist  Poetics. Her poems are coming soon to a journal near you. Descendant of both aristocrats and serfs, she adventures this world with her consort, Adam Silverman.

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THE QUARRY Turns One: Reflections & Top 20 Poems

A poem moves through a constant cycle of renewal. Each time a reader flips to it in the pages of an anthology, each time an artist shares it to her social media feed, it is born again, as new eyes, new pasts, and new souls imbue it with a new life.

A little over a year ago, Split This Rock took a major step in answering a pressing question. Since 2009, we had collected poems from our festivals, our contests, and our Poem of the Week series. These poems, in particular, demanded attention; they bore witness to injustice and, in doing so, were written to provoke transformative change within our society. How to ensure that they did not lie fallow? How to move their artists’ messages into disparate settings and different struggles, yielding dynamic interpretations that would inspire others to resist oppression?

The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database was our response. An ever-expanding central hub of over 350 poems, searchable not only by name, but by theme, language, geography, and poet identity. Designed to bring poetry fully to the center of public life, we had high hopes for how The Quarry would be used. A church group struggling with community poverty, a Black Lives Matter organizer seeking strength, a transitioning adolescent wrestling with isolation, could utilize the poems collected in The Quarry for inspiration, for solidarity, for solace. 

The Quarry’s launch received a warm reception. Split This Rock held an amazing party! An article by The Washington Post highlighted ways to use the The Quarry as a tool. The Poetry Foundation directed readers to the site. Tweetspeaks named The Quarry one of its top ten poetry picks. Poets.org integrated poems from The Quarry into their website, pointing their readers back to Split This Rock’s website for the original. Still today, new people tweet love to us having just discovered the database or a new poem they adore. And if that weren’t enough, we’ve had the pleasure of nominating poems from The Quarry for awards with the happy result of Rachel Eliza Griffith’s Elegy being selected for the 2015 Best of the Net Anthology.

As we head into The Quarry’s second year, we checked to see what poems have been viewed most. And after falling in love with them all over again, we decided to post them below. Of the 34,728 views to all the poems in The Quarry since it went live on June 24, 2015, these 20 poems have garnered a combined 10,049 page views (and counting)!

Of the top 20, two poems have not only been viewed most in The Quarry, but are also the top two poems viewed at Split This Rock’s blog, Blog This Rock, where we posted poems before the birth of The Quarry. Ross Gay’s A Small Needful Fact, the most viewed poem on both the blog and in The Quarry, has been viewed 21,640 times combined! Danez Smith’s not an elegy for Mike Brown, the 2nd most visited poem on the blog, has had a total of 19,980 views! Written in response to the killings of Eric Garner and Mike Brown, respectively, both allow us room for grief, for rage, for reason to act. This is the work poems can do and we return to them because mournfully these are the times we need them most.

We look forward to expanding The Quarry’s reach, introducing new ways in which it can continue to function not only as a repository of excellent poetry, but as an active tool for those who seek to make justice present in our time. Towards that end, we’d love to hear ways you’ve used The Quarry – for organizing, teaching, worship, reflection. Email your story to us at info@splitthisrock.org. 

And now, we proudly introduce the Top 20 Poems in The Quarry! We hope that the poems below serve as a gateway to hundreds more, that you become lost for hours (or days!) in The Quarry, searching by title, author, identity, and theme, and that you pass on to your friends in struggle those poems that mean the most to you. And most importantly, may these poems offer you inspiration and fire in your efforts building a better world. Happy reading!

Top 20 Poems Viewed Most at The Quarry

As of August 18, 2016

1. A Small Needful Fact by Ross Gay
2. america by Fatimah Asghar
3. Your Rapist is on Paid Administrative Leave by Tafisha A. Edwards
4. Ode to the Chronically Ill Body by Camisha Jones
5. What I Mean When I Say Truck Driver by Geffrey Davis
6. The Transkid Explains Gentrification, Explains Themselves by Taylor Johnson
7. For the City that Nearly Broke Me by Reginald Dwayne Betts 
8. Photo Albums by Fatimah Asghar
9. The Last New Year's Resolution by Kazumi Chin
10. The Newer Colossus by Karen Finneyfrock
11. The Opposite of Holding in Breath-- by Hari Alluri
12. not an elegy for Mike Brown by Danez Smith
13. Leaving My Childhood Home by Zeina Azzam
14. Dear American Poetry, by Jan Beatty
15. Too Pretty by Sunu P. Chandy
16. dear America by Rachel Eliza Griffiths
17. WITNESS by Ariana Brown
18. #flyingwhileblack by Imani Cezanne
19. Faith by Tim Seibles
20. Pomegranate Means Grenade by Jamaal May

Gratitude to Eric Eikenberry, Split This Rock Poetry Database Intern, as lead writer for this article. Continued gratitude as well to Split This Rock's Poetry & Social Justice Fellow Simone Roberts for her constant care & effort setting up and maintaining "The Quarry." 

Give the Gift of Poetry!

November 2016

Dear Splitistas,

We are writing to you toward the end of this truly wrenching and difficult year, still unfolding. We struggle even to write this letter. How to innumerate the injustices and violences of 2016? How indeed to speak of money in the face of shared terror of the future?

The only way is to say it plain: If, in the grip of anxiety and despair, you have turned to poems published by Split This Rock; if you have been moved to action by conversations you had at the festival; if you had your hope in the future restored at a youth slam; if you have felt emboldened in your own writing or activism, we ask that you make a donation to Split This Rock.

Statistics and lectures are necessary to educate us but they rarely reach us in our most elemental places, where we hold fear, grief, hope. That’s poetry’s role – to split us open, to help us imagine the unimaginable, to return us to our core humanity, to give us the gift of love. You can give that gift with a donation to Split This Rock.

Over and over we ourselves turned to poetry this year, as we sought understanding and a way forward. Here are some of the ways Split This Rock brought poetry into public life:

• Poetry as Action: After the Pulse shooting, we invited poets to send us poems in solidarity with marginalized communities targeted by gun violence. We published the outpouring on Split This Rock’s blog and sent the poems, accompanied by demands for gun control, to the leadership of the NRA and to members of Congress.

• Poetry as Embrace: To counter the increasingly nasty xenophobia, misogyny, and racism in our public life, poets at Split This Rock Poetry Festival fanned out across downtown DC and read poems of love and welcome – to passersby and to one another, building Dr. King’s Beloved Community street corner by street corner.

• Poetry as Power: Through Split This Rock’s youth programs, young poets learned the social and political contexts of their lives, spoke power in their poems, and spoke truth to power countless times throughout the year. They were fierce voices for fundamental change at gatherings of philanthropists, policy makers, and other young activists and dreamers. 

• Poetry as Witness & Memory: At the 9th anniversary of the bombing of Iraq’s historic bookselling street, Split This Rock played a lead role in Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here DC 2016. We brought 10 poets and translators to DC for readings, workshops, and dialogue that dispelled stereotypes, celebrated the rich cultures of the Arab and Muslim worlds, and stood in solidarity with the people of Iraq.

• Poetry as Love Made Manifest: Poetry reminds us that we are all one and one with the earth. The poems gathered in the anthology Ghost Fishing, forthcoming from the University of Georgia Press as part of Split This Rock’s Eco-Justice Poetry Project, show that earth justice is not possible without racial justice, without economic and gender justice. 

• Poetry as Truth-Telling: At the first anniversary of The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database, we looked up the top 20 most-viewed poems and offered them again as inspiration and fire in efforts building a better world. Those 20 poems are exemplary of all the poems we’ve published and presented throughout the years; they are cries of mourning and pleas for peace and reconciliation; they speak to our history of brokenness, our spirit of resistance.

And there’s been so much more: readings, performances, workshops, open mics, contests, awards, after-school poetry clubs, world-changing festivals – all engaging poetry’s unique ability to provoke change. All year round Split This Rock’s staff and board work tirelessly to raise funds so that poetry can do this essential work in the world.

But we can’t do it alone. We need you, the Split This Rock community. In 2017, we’ll be marking nine years of building this home for poets and poetry of conscience. The year ahead will be challenging. We’ll need poetry of provocation and witness more than ever: to answer hate, to take advantage of the many opportunities to engage poetry with movements for social change, to build the world we want to see.

The Morris & Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation has given Split This Rock a tremendous vote of confidence: They will match every donation from a new supporter or increased gift from an existing donor, up to $5,000. Double your donation!

We began this letter expressing dismay at speaking of money at a time such as this. And it’s true, it’s hard to talk about money. But in our society, money is power. And we’ve seen the super-wealthy wield it to distort our democracy and embolden the most hate-filled and violent among us. Help Split This Rock wield it to bring poetry and its challenge and comfort to all who crave its defiant, necessary beauty. Please give generously today.

Donate online at Split This Rock's website or send a check for any amount made out to “Split This Rock” to: Split This Rock, 1301 Connecticut Ave. N.W., Suite 600, Washington, DC 20171. Thank you.

With poetry on our lips and our fists in the air,

Sarah Browning          Camisha L. Jones          Dan Vera
Executive Director       Managing Director        Board Chair


PS – Don’t forget! Increase your gift and Split This Rock receives double the new amount!

PSS – All donations are fully tax-deductible.

Poems that Resist Police Brutality & Demand Racial Justice - Post #10

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.

****

I Am a Man

by DuEwa Frazier

I am America

I bleed the red, white and blue

I built this country

Yet you made me strange fruit

I am a man

Yet this system 

Just won't see

Why am I so feared when I should be free?

I taught you justice

I impact every aspect of culture, history and society

Still you ignore my claims and cries

I am Thurgood Marshall's gavel

I Toussaint L'Ouverture's sword

I am Frederick Douglass' en

I am W.E.B. Dubois' intellect

I am James Henrik Clarke honoring history

I am Paul Robeson, renaissance, man, hear me speak

I am Malcolm X

I am Medgar Evers

I am Martin Luther King

I am Nat Turner

I am Langston Hughes - I, Too Sing America

I am James Baldwin - Native son

I am Amiri Baraka - My people created blues music, blues poetry

I am H. Rap Brown

I am the Last Poets - I am not scared of Revolution

I am Huey Newton

I am Eldridge Cleaver

I am the Scottsboro Boys

I am Jena 6

I am Trayvon, Tasmir and Kajieme, hold me, don't let me go

Never forget me

I am Michael Brown, don't shoot

I am Eric Garner, I cannot breathe

I told you cannot breathe

Judge me not for my ants when they sag

Or my bandana 

My tattoos

My rims

Or my grillz

Look into my heart

See me carrying 400+ years of oppression

On my back

Because my DNA has a memory and yours does too

I am a man, I am no different from you

I have grown from innocent boy to a man who has

Seen it all

I redefine the meaning of THUG as - Transform Hope Unity and Growth

I am marching to take a stand

New York City, DC, Atlanta, St. Louis, Philly

Detroit and Oakland

And in the time of the new civil rights era

This revolution will most certainly be televised, photographed and videotaped

I galvanize and organize

See me, hear me

I will not retreat

You may lie on me

Punch me

Shoot me and strike me down

You may burn my house, spread your hate on my street

You may try to kill me and say I wanted it, asked for it, deserved it

You may call me every n-word, spook, porch monkey, and jigaboo in the book

Still, I will not retreat

I will protect my family

I will raise my children

I will secure the future of the next generation

I will teach

I will pray for my people and this nation, under God

I will create a new world

One that makes you see me, hear me, respect me, honor me

I will fight for justice

I will fight to be seen as a man, in all of my power

In all of my glory

I will fight to be viewed as a human of value

On the shoulders of my ancestors

Do I stand

As I proclaim 

I AM A MAN!

****

Ferguson poem

by Chandramohan S

The anger of the pronoun

sandwiched 

smothered

between

"Acting white"

and 

the blackness of the round silver bullets.

****

If Riot Means Destruction

by Wesley Rothman

Without the moon we find       our lightness        whiteness

washed out brightness      coming down on us       a baton of

unconsciousness      unconscienceness         the breakage we

didn't know we could bring        riot is not reaction        it is

burning down from within           how we burn an other's body

down quietly          over time           keep the ember humming

blowing          blowing          blow        until the tongue flares

sizzled and singeing                            riot is the whiteness 

looting stores propped in the chest             robbing water and

bread to break down         the head and will of an other    the

riot begins with silence        with an attack        a drone strike

a sniper some mile off      every voice in the street    fist     cry

every face in the eye               of a camera is not            a riot

not a threat     a force to stop traffic        bring on the red lights

shut down the headlights         eager to blind         bring down

the sky         the moon          bring down               bring down

****

(no title)

by Kristen McCallum

Stop the apologies for non apologies because our expressions should feel free

I don't believe in holding tongues when my people cannot breathe

Feeling sick from being tired of removing erasers from our heels

Don't you dare look in our faces and dictate how much we can feel

The innocent lives lost at the cost of independent madness

But you're placing blame on grieving hearts that too have felt this sadness

Now all lives matter when the perp isn't gifted...with a pension package, a                                                                        badge and pardons unlimited 

But black lives shouldn't matter, our priority should be shifted?

Our protests should halt and our cries should be muffled?

You think these mothers only mourn so you feathers will get ruffled?

There's no timeline for our justice because we deserve it now.

Condolences for the losses that we've spent decades crying about

You say in due time but our time has been due, you really still think we are                                                                                            waiting on you?

We are tired of burying the dreams of our youth, the mothers of our children                                                                         and the fathers of them too

This work is not an option. We aren't asking for the room.

So do not ask us for a silence you aren't entitled to.

****

For Eric Garner

by Donna Katzin

It was not the cigarettes

they said you sold on the street,

short stubby cancer sticks, 

that took your life.

It was not potato chips and Coca-Cola,

calories or cholesterol 

that blubbered your belly,

slowed your step.

It was no weak heart --

yours filled with mother, wife, son,

and hope to make ends meet for them

one sidewalk cigarette at a time

It was the color of your skin

that made white officers in State Island

wrestle you to the ground,

knee on your face,

choke you from behind,

that deafened them

eleven times, when you gasped

I can't breathe.

It was your blackness that blinded

the Grand Jury to your humanity,

made them decide your death

wasn't even a crime.

Perhaps it was the memory in a shallow grave

of green plantations, brown mud,

where black men walked in chains,

hung from trees for lesser crimes,

the terror in white hearts

that the cold avalanche

of hatred they began

would bury them.

****

Redeem the Dream

by Ty Gray-EL

Now this poetic statement

may seem to some extreme

Yet a people climb no higher

than the summit of their dreams

So we must plan this hour

an elaborate spiritual scheme

For the sake of all humanity

we must Redeem the Dream

Cause if the Reverend Doctor

were standing here today

I'm not sure that he'd be pleased

not certain what he'd say

I's been more than 50 years

since that faith-filled day

Still the circumstances

have not gone away

Because police brutality

cast a shadow on our dreams

A blue haze prevents the raising

of our people's self esteem

America must realize

Its folk are under attack

The victims being assaulted

are those driving while black

Cause some men in blue we've chose

to protect and serve

seize every opportunity

to kick us to the curb

Of the almost 3 millions Americans

locked up in our jails

7 out of 10 are black or brown

How did Justice tip the scales

I thought Justice was blindfolded

She must be reading braille

Obviously she's not colorblind

she obviously favors pale

This poem is a plea for justice

to right this grievous wrong

It's time the burden was lifted

we carried the load too long

From all the melanised people

oppressed by men in blue

this poem is a prayerful out-cry

that we are human too

In the name of God, we ask

Call of your cruel regime

In the name of god, we pray

Dear Lord, redeem the dream

of Dr. Martin Luther King

****

One River, One Boat

by Marjory Wentworth

"I know there's something better down the road."

- Elizabeth Alexander

Because our history is a knot

we try to unravel, while others

try to tighten it, we tire easily

and fray the cords that bind us

The cord is a slow moving river,

spiraling across the land

in a succession of S's,

splintering near the sea.

Picture us all, crowded onto a boat

at the last bend in the river:

watch children stepping off the school bus,

parents late for work, grandparents

fishing for favorite memories,

teachers tapping their desks

with red pens, firemen suiting u

to save us, nurses making rounds,

baristas grinding coffee beans,

dockworkers unloading apartment size

containers of computers and toys

from factories across the sea.

Every morning a different veteran

stands at the base of the bridge

holding a cardboard sign

with misspelled words and an empty cup.

In fields at daybreak, rows of migrant

farm workers standing on ladders, break open

iced peach blossoms; their breath rising

and resting above the frozen fields like clouds.

A jonboat drifts down the river.

Inside, a small boy lies on his back;

hand laced behind his head, he watches

stars fade from the sky and dreams.

Consider the prophet John, calling us

from the edge of the wilderness to name

the harm that has been done, to make it

plain, and enter the river and rise.

It is not about asking for forgiveness.

It is not about bowing our heads in shame;

because it all begins and ends here:

while workers unearth trenches

at Gadsden's Wharf, where 100,000

Africans were imprisoned within brick walls

awaiting auction, death, or worse.

Where the dead were thrown into the water,

and the river clogged with corpses 

has kept centuries of silence.

It is time to gather at the water's edge,

and toss wreaths into this watery grave.

And it is time to praise the judge

who cleared George Stinney's name,

seventy years after the fact,

we honor him: we pray.

Here, where the Confederate flag still flies

beside the Statehouse, haunted by our past, 

conflicted about the future; at the heart

of it, we are at war with ourselves

huddled together on this boat

handed down to us - stuck

at the last bend of a wide river

splintering near the sea.

****

Ghazal for Our Sons

by JP Howard

No one knew seventeen would be his last candle.

There’s always a flicker of hope, even after that last flame.

History repeats itself in the worse ways.  If you say their names out loud:

Emmett, Trayvon, Sean, Amadou you will burst into flames.

How much repetition can we take before we grow tired of these stanzas?

My teenage son looks more man than child; I wonder what storm will he ignite?

This poem has no date, no place to rest its final line,

as long as justice flickers in the distance.

What is it about a brown boys face

that makes the world around him explode?

A  mother sees the sparkle in her son’s eyes,

but a stranger’s fingers extinguish his flame.

Juliet, how many mamas have to hold a candlelight vigil

to get this spark started?

*Ghazal for Our Sons was originally published in Stand Our Ground Anthology: Poems for Trayvon Martin and Marissa Alexander, edited by Ewuare X. Osayande, FreedomSeed Press, 2013. Link to website: http://standourgroundbook.com

****

My Otherwise

(after Jane Kenyon)

by Susan Scheid

I awoke today

with two strong boys.

It might have been

otherwise.  I kissed

their cheeks, pale

young, innocent

male.  It might

have been otherwise.

They walked through the park

and home again safely.

All day long I lived without

fear for the ones I love.

For lunch we made grilled

cheese sandwiches. It might

have been otherwise.

We ate dinner together

at a table with paper

napkins.  It might

have been otherwise.

The boys slept in beds

in a room with painted walls

and planned other days

just like this day.

And I prayed in the dark

because I know,

there are other mothers

with boys for whom

every day is otherwise.