In the Land of the Stuck

There is so much violence in the world, such a huge gap in wealth, and then there's mortality.  And yet I go on living, with most of my energy focused on the small details of my life . . .

I was honored to have New Verse News publish this poem.

In the Land of the Stuck

First Friday Poetry Reading at Feature Poet at Fire: A Special Experience for Me

This past Friday, April 1, 2016 will be a date I remember for a long while.  I had my first opportunity to read for an extended period of time.  I was so thrilled that 35 or so folks to came to listen and/or participate in the open mic prior to my reading. It was moving to see that my poetry did have an effect on folks. I am very appreciative of the people there who showed me with words and in other ways that my poetry reached them.  Wow. Noting more can be asked.

I plan to post some video clips from the reading, so stay tuned.

Friday April 1, Doors Open at 8, Open Mic at 8:30 and the Feature Poet (gulp, me) at 9PM

I am excited and a good bit nervous to be invited to be the feature poet at Fire Historical and Cultural Arts Collaborative first Friday poetry event.  This will be the first i time that I have gotten to read a chunk of my work and it is at the place, where in my older age, I have "grown up poetically".  I am so grateful.  Come if you can!

Common Threads: My Most Exciting and Rich Performance Experience Yet

On February 4, 2016 at the Kalamazoo Institute of the Arts (KIA), I was honored to be part of poetry/music/art performance piece that was called Common Threads.

It was billed as "Poetry + music join in a call and response about art + race with creative justice arts activits Denise Miller, Dr. Michelle S. Johnson (aka dj Disobedience) Abbie Maikoski, and Jim Croteau and musicians Anne Rhode and Jonathan Boyd."
It was all put together by my poetry mentor, Denise Miller. It was a great honor to perform with her and these other great artists. The paintings from the exhibit Common Ground: African American Art at the Kalamazoo Institute of the Arts (http://www.kiarts.org/page.php?page_id=1055) that inspired the poetry or music was projected in the background. It was so well put together and so powerful.





I was trying to address White people as they approach race, racism, and art from the African American community in the four poems that I read. It was probably the best, and most exciting creative performance I have been a part of. I love poetry that addresses social change and love having my creative work be a part of efforts toward such change.

Look to the KIA website--we will be repeating the performance sometimes in the Spring or early Summer!

Redbird Chapbooks will the publishing my chapbook

In September I got the exciting news that Redbird Chapbooks will be publishing my first chapbook. Sarah Hayes, an editor from Redbird, will begin working with me on editing the poems next week (end of February 2016). I am as excited about working with an editor to improve the poems as I am about have a chapbook published. The chapbook should be out sometime this year. More on that soon.

Meantime check out Redbird.  Their chapbooks look great---consider buying one (but save some money for when mine comes out too.)

Redbird Chapbooks

Used to Not Seeing (or Everyone's Mississippi Delta)

 

I was honored to be asked to share this poem at the Racial Healing and Action Service at Second Baptist Church here in Kalamazoo a couple of weeks ago. The service represented the beginning of a collaboration of sorts between ISAAC and ERACCE to work together in dismantling racism.

I believe poetry can play a part in social change and is at its best when it does so.

I believe that for white folks to be able to do anti-racist work effectively over the long haul, we need to be aware of how racism hands us all kinds of privileges on the backs of people of color and we also need to be aware of how, at the same time, racism, that place of racial superiority,  robs us of our humanity. This is my attempt to address that belief in a personal and poetic way. (What follows is a version revised post that reading in June)

 Used to Not Seeing (or Everyone's Mississippi Delta)

Only low beams lit the road

as my parents drove Highway 61

south out of Memphis in route

to Cleveland, Mississippi. We passed

the Devils Crossroads in Clarksdale,

there wasn't a marker, we were blind

to more than the Blues. I barely saw

the civil rights marches, only learned later

it's not a delta at all, no mouth

until further south. It's all alluvial

plain, this place of my birth. Grandpa

disembarked in Baltimore's harbor

in 1921, moved south when

cotton was still king, but

he never planted. Instead he owned

a five and dime on Main Street

in Cleveland. I was proud

to help clerk. Sometimes he'd aim

squinted eyes my way, talk the Italian

he taught me, it translates: “follow that N____r."

"It's the longest stretch of straight road

east of the Great River," my Dad

always said as he drove with low beams

to avoid blinding the oncoming

drivers like us. We got used to not seeing

anything beyond the cotton

by the side of the road.

Even amid fields of outcries

at the murders in the streets,

in the parks, and the churches,

we whites miss the lay of the land

with our questions:

Was the officer following policy?

Was the shooter mentally ill?

Isn't the KKK really to blame?

The fertile flatness freed

by the floods of the Mississippi

and Yazoo was stolen

and exploited--Indian removal, slavery,

sharecropping, Jim Crow de jure

and now de facto. History's alive and

denied. But with my heart set

on high beams, I can see how

the land of my birth really lies,

how I could become Darren Wilson,

even Dylann Roof, if I don't feel

my conscription. If I don't feel

the white of my finger placed

every day on the trigger of the gun

I was given in my cradle, then

there's no chance of turning gun

into ploughshare, there's only

this senseless soldiering on.

This poem was original published in a earlier version in New Verse News (click here for that version) 

Please let me know if you share this poem..

Best Doggone Dog in the West

 Best Doggone Dog in the West--Direct Link to the Poem   

I wanted a separate posting for this poem that just came out in Melancholy Hyperbole. The poem is a tough one for me, reflecting back on the time that I had to make a decision for my mother that she was not going to return to the hospital yet again, that she was done fighting to live.

Remember Old Yeller?  I have heard many stories from folks on how tough that movie was as a kid for them when Travis had to shoot Old Yeller because he was rabid.  It was a trauma for me. And well, you'll see how it fits together.

Take a look and comment there too.

Also take a look at the e-zine in general, it is becoming one of my favorite poetry journals.