We Follow

I rode with Dad
in our old Ford pickup,
through a spring blizzard.
Thick white snow blinded us.

I was safe and warm inside Dad’s competence
as he drove to rescue sheep, bound and determined
to follow the leader and die.

At the fence corner, Dad stopped and held the door for me,
straining against wind’s persistence to scour us from the new land.

The blasts drove needles into my eyes
and whipped the sheep
into a slough’s thin skin of ice over two feet of water.
They’d all freeze in a pile-up,
their water-logged wool weighing them down.

Dad pitted his will against sheep’s instinct to follow the tail in front
even to death.

He threw one sheep after another onto dry ground
while I blocked their single-minded attempt to return to the herd,
thwarting their dead end, over and over,
until critical mass and the herd’s attention turned
and they followed another leader to a drier corner of the field.

Dad’s battalion unlocked the gates of Mauthausen.
Later, Dad meant it when he told his students,
“Just because everyone else does it, doesn’t mean you have to.”

Deep in their DNA my ninth graders are sheep, too,
obeying the comfortable mindlessness of following the tail in front
to certain extinction, except for some teacher’s intervention.

“We Made it for You” — Spoken Word by Daniel Ellis

Posted by johnnyincision

I’m here to speak truth.

Truth in the light of histories textbooks. That deny my heritage.

Truth in the light of men’s ignorance. Whom infringe upon the rights of those who’re indigenous.

Truth in the light of broken dreams. As they carried us in chains across the eastern seas

I wrote this to speak truth into the misguided, mismatched, misinterpreted, misread and misrepresented flukes they disguise as the truth of what they truly think I am.

To them I am

A “dolla dolla bill y’all”, a “Get money, spend money, f*** b words”. Another sound cloud rapper they can twiddle to with their screen tapping thumbs, not understanding I did it to promote my people and their message of struggle and pain.

Then claiming to love my “culture” and wear their hair in my fashion because they think it’s “high” fashion.

I am here to speak the truth

You CANNOT say the N-word if you haven’t been called it before.

To them I am

Those pair of nikes. The ones you cop cuz everybody thinks I play basketball and is good at sports.

To them I am the stereotype

breakdancing, rap loving, watermelon eating, unaware, ignorant beast of a man, who in the truth of it all is just trying to live his life like every human being.

I’m here to speak truth.

I get followed in stores. Not because the manager finds me so likeable he needs to be near me, but because of his racial bias he thinks I can’t and won’t buy that sweater on rack 15 at Forever 21.

I’m here to speak truth.

I am the constant criticism of rebellion. The moment I ask for my rights to be given freely and I say “Black Lives Matter”, they still devalue and desensitize. All because they’re afraid of what’s before their eyes. A revolution.

I’m here to speak truth.

They think just because of my skin tone, I should be in a different zone. They think I shouldn’t be here. “Go back to Africa”, they say. “We don’t like you’re kind”. “It’d be best if you didn’t speak your mind”.

When I hear someone say go back to Africa, or that they don’t need black people and say Blacks aren’t American.

Don’t tell me to go home because I will not stay where I’m not wanted . But it makes you think because they wanted us so bad they had to have a nation so in a sense they must’ve wanted us pretty bad? Now I don’t mean that in a good way. We didn’t ask to be here. On the Ivory coast home to the mother shore. Taken from our homes and land. Kicked and pushed. Grasping for return as we were dragged across the damp African sand. We rocked back and forth in a strange and alien place where we were corralled on ships like cattle. The restless waves as they rolled and battled. Mothers, fathers, sons and daughters. Taken from our homes. As some were drowned in water.

Wail and wail in the enduring spirit men and women dreaded to hear it.

I’m here to speak the truth.

We came to a nation that wanted us only to build it for them.

I’m here to speak the truth.

Built on the backs of slaves, the nation of so called freedom.

I’m here to speak the truth.

Forced to believe in a higher power and made to forget our history. How can I believe in a god of the men that denounced my god telling me my God is now their God all whilst wanting me to believe they are God…. it makes you think.

I’m here to speak the truth.

Years of struggle bred resilience to pain. As we learned there didn’t need to be any shame of our pigment, and that it was better to live in it.

I’m here to speak the truth.

They tried to silence us by killing our leaders.

Malcolm X Martin Luther King. On those sad days did we truly sing. In the name of freedom sad songs that defined our people. I sing of the southern fields and slave ships that make me think of the sweet by and by. How I would always cry. Seeing Grammy Nellie tell me of her days in the south. Talking about the day she met Mamie Till and The way Emmett looked without a mouth.

Evil intentions for but a boy. All he had in his heart was joy. Where the days where hot in the endless sun singing spiritual songs of freedom. Some Glad morning when this life is over I’ll fly away… Like those black bodies swinging in the southern trees they too will fly away with the winds of change, all in the name of liberation.

I’m here to speak the truth.

Were so close and yet so far, So that’s why we must fight.

I’m here to speak the truth

You’re right, Black people aren’t Americans.

We Are America.

The fruition of strange fruit bred from beautiful seeds that blossom in grow in the harshest of places and spaces. Beautiful Black People who embody the essence of the American dream of progress, ambition and hard work that we made. We are the leaders who’ve climbed ladders and mountains to gain the truth of our struggle. Pioneers of this land. We the people have the right to have rights.

I’m here to speak the truth.

You didn’t make America Great.

We made it for you.

We made it.

Poetry Selections from Joshua Feliciano

Posted by johnnyincision

More Than Just Words

Poetry is like a song written on paper

It doesn’t always have to rhyme

It doesn’t always need time

You could make a poem in poetry about everything

It could take seconds and it can take hours

But poetry is like a way of expression

You can always use it when experiencing a side of depression

There are times when you are feeling down

Or maybe you’re just feeling

Up!

Poetry is a place of freedom

Life Before Growing Up

Look in all honesty I never had much

I grew up with enough food to survive and the entertainment I needed

But the truth behind it all is my mom shedding blood and tears behind it all

Even as a kid I used to sit and think about it in a bathroom stall

Can you feel my pain?

If not just know this constant pain runs in my veins

Everyday reflecting on what I did and why I did it

Sitting alone in the dark wanting to be a part of the darkness

All this pain laying right on top of my conscious

There’s a whole lot more

But I’d rather keep that in my core for now

A Message to Future Me

A message to future me:

Remember that time you graduated high school

Well now life is a bit harder isn’t it

Just keep focusing on your true being you’ll have this in no time

Remember when you struggle just think about your wife and kids

Remember the time you realized it was going to be extremely hard in the military

Well now look back at it, it was pretty easy wasn’t it

Now you have other goals to focus on

Focus on those around you and the ones that were there for you when you truly needed it

Drive forward because your life moments are not what built you to be you

You worked hard for this yourself

Now build from it

Sinking Pain

I see others being mocked for what they wear, oh it is too much to bear

Putting on a fresh pair of kicks, people think it’s to pick up chicks

Working hard in classes to get a possible good future, just to get bullied and get a few sutures

Paying attention to what people are saying, just to head home and keep on praying

People acting cool in school, when after the days over they sit around and drool

Kids coming to school unprepared, while teachers not knowing the child’s despair

I see girls wearing lots of makeup, when the beauty inside can raise the stakes up

Mother Love

The family photo just sitting there in the distance

Ripped up but not broken

Our family may not be so bright or wealthy

But forever we lay and stand together

We may be grown but my mother will always see us as her little ones

It doesn’t matter if I’m 21 or 50 my mother will always treat me like a child

I love my mother and forever will love her

Hope

I hope that I start a fresh life, with a beautiful wife

I hope someday that after I graduate from high school,

my life wouldn’t treat me much as a fool

I hope that someday these crayons I use will evaporate,

so that I could see what it looks like melted and elaborate

I hope that someday my children will grow, for my legacy I will bestow

I hope that someday I can rest easy, rest easily without feeling a bit queasy

I hope that someday the people around me will succeed,

so they won’t become alcoholics drinking tons of mead

I hope that in the light of day, my destiny will shine and lead the way

I hope that sometime soon I have a nice house,

come home to a good morning and my wife in a blouse

I hope that in time of despair, god will help us with time to spare

I hope that one night, god will give me power with all his might

I hope that one morning, I can die peacefully with plenty of people mourning

Government

We all know that in politics only one can be the winner

The smartest and bravest will usually be the sinner

This government we follow empties our pockets causing a bruise

These distractions we’re being attracted to are not only to amuse

Everything we’re brought towards to always seems convincing

One by one, each and every person’s information is slowly mincing

In this world, even if we understand a certain matter nothing seems to be comprehensive

Days and days go by and it seems to me everything in life gets more expensive

Life Behind the Scenes

Good ol happy moments

Just sitting back and relaxing

Playing video games that teach

So attached to learning like a leech

Reading good books and comics

For a person like me it’s a bit ironic

But a lot of people don’t realize my mind works like I’m sonic

On free times I lay down in bed watching Youtube

Watching videos about literally anything

Analyzing and researching everything

I may be a bit different but I’m very gifted

I help other people when times get devastating

I open up their minds with my words and usually have them contemplating

I am my own king

Living my life on words is better than living my life focusing on expensive things

Experiment 89

It was cold, matter of fact freezing in this steel coated room

I stood up feeling weak,starved, and dizzy

I walked on a floor that had sharp but little pieces of glass

I could not feel the pain being administered by these little glass pieces

I see a door close by as I stumble across this risky floor

I look through the glass pane only to discover other patients like myself being tested on

I see another within eyesight being mutated into some sort of creature

It was scaly, massive, and scary looking

Scientists begin opening the doors, patient’s run wild as the beast swallows them one by one

I make a run for it, so close to the door and “Gulp” “Crunch Crunch”

The Four Deaths of Mitchell Fish

Posted by mmacbride

THE FOUR DEATHS OF MITCHELL FISH

by Luke Daly

[pdf version here: Daly-FourDeathsofMitchellFish]

[see the companion essay “Teaching Fiction: Craft, Composition Theory, and a Lie“]

I. Oxygen

I slash in like a dull knife but don’t tip into the abyss. Just wow at the Formica. Some wrongful oxygen rises up the ways in my neck. I do fall then

II. Oxygen

Slick Mick pushed in through the screen door, stopped in the middle of my eat-in kitchen with the brand new formica countertops his finger in the air like he was gonna say something. Fell face first on the floor right where you’re standing. If I’m telling the truth? I hoped he was dead. So I started sifting my hands like this through the bills and penny-savers on the formica, feeling for my cordless phone and hoping that if he was dead, I wouldn’t find the phone quick enough to save him. And I saw him on Day One, charming as only a drunk can. Previous to the nightly urination in bed and being too far gone to wake up and clean it. Previous to driving my glossy black Oldsmobile into the Blue Earth River the day after I got it. Previous to stabbing his hand with a steak-knife trying to show off for Jenny at Ponderosa. That’s why Ponderosa uses knives with rounded tips now: My man, Slick Mick. And here he was in my trailer, like a damned dead fish, oily from the car but no real work, just playing around with his nuts. Go on and lie there, you sick duck. I’ll call you an ambulance just as soon as I find my cordless phone.

Continue reading →

Five poems by Dallas Crow

Posted by mmacbride

Dallas Crow

1296 Highland Parkway

St. Paul, MN 5511

dallas.crow@breckschool.org

[pdf version here: Crow-poems]

Antigone in Her Tomb

_____________________________________________________________________________

Zeus,

Your will, finally, is unknowable. I am

exhausted, exasperated. Look

where my most willful

vows have landed me. Father, mother, and a brother already

underground, exiled for eternity from our native

Thebes . . . I claim no kin in that city. My

so-called sister mourns alone,

respected by a fool and other frauds, a

quorum of spineless idiots

posing as law-abiding citizens. The

offense reeks—a blind man can see that.

No one deserves such a sentence, least of all

my deceived, much-wronged brother—

left to rot on the desert plain. Generations will

know I would not accept that un-

just decree. I am not sorry, though I admit

I may have misjudged the jury of the gods.

Here I will end my otherwise unending agony,

groomless, convicted, and unconvinced.

From now on, on the surface of this most grotesque

earth, my name will echo, a doer of

deeds, one who believes, who acts, while

Creon—cruel, unjust—will be forever

banished from the rolls of the noble.

Always, always, always,

Antigone

[From Small, Imperfect Paradise (Parallel Press, 2013). Originally published in Arion.] Continue reading →

4 Poems by Richard Robbins

Posted by johnnyincision

Four Poems by Richard Robbins

St. Francis and the Birds

—a painting by Stanley Spencer

The parade will go no

further than the wall, where

the gardener shields her eyes,

the ducks, hens, and geese scuttle

toward his frock, each dove

and jay leaning forward

on the low tiled roof to

watch the boy lead each one,

saint and bird, toward that town

his wings would bend for,

blind daylight place from which

his face must turn away.

* First published in I-70 Review Continue reading →