December 9, 2022
What Felicia Says
By Jonie McIntire
1
As I roll past the police car at the intersection, I tap the brakes immediately. Only five miles over—not bad. My front headlight has been out forever, but it’s daytime and I haven’t been pulled over yet. I try to picture my brake lights, think for a moment how they are like the middle of your back, a part you never get to see for yourself. My friend Felicia was pulled over once for the light above her license plate. I don’t even know if you can see the numbers on my plate. The sticker is there. I remember putting it on the pile of stickers from previous years. So many I think one of these days they’ll all fall right off. The plate itself is held on by one rusting bolt so it rattles when I stop. But nobody ever pulls me over.
2
Felicia says when she gets in her car she makes sure her cell phone is fully charged. She touches her mother’s name on the contact button. When there’s a cop car behind her, she touches the police information button she has programmed into her phone. She says what you do when they start to pull you over is call immediately. They have to tell someone when they pull you over. Don’t do anything until they confirm it. She says people disappear that way, trying to comply only for their bodies to be found later. I say I usually just think what now? Or now I’m going to be late. I don’t even know any numbers for police other than 911. Felicia has them all programmed in her phone. Non-emergency, public records. She tries to remember their names, the cops on beat in her neighborhood, so she can look them in the eye, say their name. She doesn’t want to be afraid, but Felicia says when she sees a cop car behind her she wonders would they kill her.
3
During the winter, I miss the rain because there’s nothing to wash the salt off my car. You can barely see through my car windows, they are so dusted with white road salt. I can’t imagine anyone can see into my car. Felicia says that’s why she pays extra for tinted windows, but it’s like they still can see black skin through dark windows. She says has anyone ever asked why you’re in this neighborhood? I say no, maybe why so early or late, where are you headed, and definitely why so fast. I say I drive like I’m in a road race and I’m about to win. I laugh at my silliness. She says she’s been asked why she’s here in her own neighborhood. She says she doesn’t want to feel like this but she drives to disappear.
Jonie McIntire is the first female poet laureate of Lucas County, Ohio. Her most recent chapbook, Semidomesticated (rereleased by Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2022) won Red Flag Poetry’s 2020 chapbook contest. Her prior chapbooks are Beyond the Sidewalk (NightBallet Press, 2017) and Not All Who Are Lost Wander (Finishing Line Press, 2016). She is poetry editor at Of Rust and Glass and membership chair at Ohio Poetry Association. Her poems—published in print journals and anthologies, online, and even in cement—have been nominated for Best of the Net and The Pushcart Prize. McIntire hosts the monthly reading series Uncloistered Poetry from Toledo, Ohio. Learn more at https://www.joniemcintire.net.
November 11, 2022
That One Poem Was Bullshit
By Heather Martin
Who was I to write a poem about Black lives?
As if living in a gentrified gap
among West-side streets
meant I had earned the right
to take images,
make assumptions,
bestow observations
in my stanzas,
written to
convey some deep understanding
or familiarity.
I am an eggshell shard,
safely trapped in the viscous white,
slipping easily left, right,
eluding jabbing fingers.
Heather Martin has been a professional writer and editor since 1991. She edits business and academic content and ghost writes for and coaches first-time memoir authors. Heather has been writing poems since she was a child. Her poems have been published in Mock Turtle Zine, a Dayton, Ohio, literary magazine.
October 12, 2022
Columbian Harmony Cemetery
By Wayne H. Swanger
Headstones once stood
On Harmony’s rolling hillside,
Row on row, under majestic elm,
Amid grass lush through grace
Of friend and family.
Stones that marked graves
Of freedmen laid to rest,
In death respected …
At last.
Pillage, disguised
As progress, defiled
This resting place
Into a scramble of
Bone,
Shroud,
Coffin
A rubble of inhumanity.
Will the dead protest?
Their names, dates … epitaphs
Hewn into the cold slabs,
Sold by the ton,
Truck loads strewn as riprap
Along the Potomac’s banks
To retain alluvium
For descendants of plantation
Slave owners?
Fear these stones
That shock sensibilities
That now memorialize
Desecration of the dead …
Our depravity.
Wayne Swanger, a native Pennsylvanian, has published in Friends Journal and other Quaker publications as well as regional literary journals including The Watershed Journal, Tobeco, and The Bridge Literary Arts Journal. He recently published his first book of poetry, Fields of His Heart (The Watershed Journal Literary Group, 2020).
September 14, 2022
I Should Have Said Something
By Martin Grey
“Why don’t they try speaking English?”
he muttered.
The back of a flat cap
shaking slowly,
as a Polish family
stowed their luggage
a little up the carriage.
A private assumption,
hiding in the background noise
of the train,
as it pulled away
from the airport station.
“Shouldn’t be here if you can’t speak English,”
she mumbled.
A few flicks of faded hair,
falling through the headrest,
the only clue
to who should be,
or if her case was full
of polyglot mentality,
from a country
where she speaks
the language fluently.
“What annoys me is when they get on with their trolleys,”
he murmured.
“You ask ’em to move their bags and they say no.”
I leaned into the gap between us,
at the blotches and wrinkles
in the face below the flat cap,
to ask him what he meant exactly,
why a family
without a trolley
was making them so angry.
“Can’t do anything yet,”
she mouthed.
Their closing eyes
nodding with agreement.
My resigning eyes averting
from what she’d want to do,
and when she thought
it would be acceptable to do it,
falling back
into how they’d be deceived
when their problems didn’t leave,
after those who shouldn’t be here
had gone.
I said nothing.
Martin Grey is a poet based in Nottingham, UK, who writes mostly about connection, empathy, love, and childhood. His first collection, The Prettyboys of Gangster Town, was published in 2020 through Fly on the Wall Press. He co-presents Poetry Global Network’s The Poetry News and is codirector of World Jam, a nonprofit for connecting communities through poetry and music.
August 12, 2022
My Activism
By Cara Thompson
Editors’ Note: Cara Thompson read “My Activism” during the international virtual poetry event Poets Against Racism: In This Together 2022. See the event recording here.
My activism is as quiet as firing neurons
and as loud as falling statues.
It creeps up on you silently,
scrawls love notes on your walls
and crawls inside your ballot boxes.
My activism is sceptical.
Its nose twitches at lip service.
It itches, burns beneath the friction of
scrolling fingers and Judas kisses.
My activism is supple,
malleable, like clay.
It’s eager to learn,
to take shape in the deep cracks of weathered hands,
and to cure with the sands of wisdom and time.
My activism is ancestral.
It’s written in the lines of my heel and my double helix.
It traverses through time,
straddling a battalion of broad-shouldered women
who birthed dark armies and rained fire from the mountain tops.
My activism is bottomless.
Its waters run deep.
It invites you to drink,
to savour, to blink against the shadows
and lock eyes across the darkness.
And my activism is expansive.
Its arms stretch like elastic to find you.
It reminds you to pull against the status quo
until something finally snaps.
Cara Thompson is a poet, artivist, and self-described “Black Wellness Warrior” from Nottingham, UK. Born into a lively Jamaican family, Cara writes works that celebrate her Caribbean heritage and explore links between mental health and social justice. Her writing has been commissioned and featured by a range of organizations, including the NHS Leadership Academy, Huffpost Black Voices, Oxfam International, and Simon and Schuster. Cara is also a proud member of the Nottingham-based poetry group GOBS Collective. In 2021, Cara won the UNESCO Cities of Literature’s international slam poetry competition SlamOVision with her poem “Island Screams.”
July 12, 2022
Journeying
By Ambrose Musiyiwa
Editors’ Note: Ambrose Musiyiwa read “Journeying” during the international virtual poetry event Poets Against Racism: In This Together 2022. See the event recording here.
we threw
things that were heavy
overboard
they sank
we stayed afloat
we lived
they turned
into creatures of the sea
and stayed below the surface
when we reached dry land
they turned
into creatures of shadow
and followed us everywhere
Ambrose Musiyiwa is a poet and a journalist. He coordinates Journeys in Translation, an international volunteer-driven initiative that is translating the book Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge into other languages. Books he has edited include Black Lives Matter: Poems for a New World and Poetry and Settled Status for All: An Anthology. “Journeying” is from Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015). Ambrose advocates calls for a support package and scholarships for African students who were studying in Ukraine so that they, like their Ukrainian counterparts, can continue with their studies.
Juneteenth
Posted June 19, 2022
By Patricia Thrushart
History of families torn at the block
like stock, chained in stained rags,
naked, some scarred with the whip,
or the brand of the runaway.
Sons taken from fathers,
babies from mothers,
the buyers and sellers
eying muscle and girth—
another birth, another field hand.
After Juneteenth
those still breathing,
those who did not flee,
were freed.
Some took the name
of their keepers—the only history
possibly, impossibly, that could
reunite them. “Find me,”
the names said.
“Find me,” their hearts echoed.
Patricia Thrushart has published four books of poetry. Her latest is Inspired: Poetry From Underground Railroad Testimonies, put out by Mammoth Books. Her work appears regularly in The Watershed Journal, a regional literary magazine of northwestern Pennsylvania, and on the website North/South Appalachia. Her poems have been published in Tiny Seed, Clarion University’s Tobeco, Word Cat, Still Point Arts Quarterly, The Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Feminine Collective, Curating Alexandria, High Shelf Press, and Muddy River. Her first historical nonfiction book, Cursed: The Story of Marion Alsobrook Stahlman, was published in December 2021 by Adelaide Books, New York.
West Broadway: A Plea
Posted May 20, 2022
By Tabassam Shah
We cannot be lazy in this moment
Or else we will become part of the problem
Historical trauma will plague our people
Will lead to uprising that others reframe as riots
This unrest reflects larger, enduring systemics of oppression
Choose to be a witness to justice-making
Musa asked the wise men if he could walk with them
They asked him
How can you walk with patience
If you bear no full understanding of the situation?
Don’t let the oppressors devalue the lives of the oppressed
Old schemers will not call George Floyd a human, a father
But will call him a thug
Yet he has become a martyr in this war for humanity
Don’t let them devalue him
Choose to be a witness to justice-making
Living under sustained oppression is worse than dying
The martyr’s last breath: if I can’t live life on my feet,
Then life’s not worth living
Choose to be a witness to justice-making
Grief-stricken, the voices of the unheard were burning tonight
West Broadway was on fire
Embers, flames and ashes
Any remnant of justice up in smoke
Twelve year old Aisha was pleading
When will you stop killing my people?
Who will remain human?
Who will hold onto empathy so we don’t numb with indifference?
Choose to be a witness to justice-making
Tabassam Shah is a community activist living in western Pennsylvania, where she works to bring progressive rural voices into the mainstream conversation about improving local communities. She began writing poetry as a young teen to contend with feeling different (as a child of Pakistani immigrants) from her peers while growing up in the foothills of southern Appalachia. Through poetry, her emphasis on difference eventually gave way to a focus on the similarities within humanity across the globe. She is working on a poetry manuscript, enjoys collaborating with writers not only local but also far and wide, and has published poetry in The Watershed Journal and The Bridge Literary Arts Journal.
People Are Looking
Posted April 23, 2022
By Laura Grevel
They just keep killing black men—
these self-appointed vigilantes and cops—killing
men jogging down the street like Ahmaud Arbery
or men coming out of a shop like George Floyd,
and the BLM started marching,
and the Trump response
sent an Armageddon of armored cops and henchmen
to attack people who were not armored
who were protesting the murders of black men.
A Star Wars attack on regular people,
and the protesters march wearing Covid masks,
march those streets, through smoke and tear gas,
and the robotic cops bear down bear down brutalize,
and my mind races to find the puzzle pieces
because I seem to have missed something.
1968
I am seven. I walk into a church in East Austin
with my mother, brother, sister.
Moselle, who cleans our house and takes care of us kids,
invited us to her daughter’s wedding. And when we walk in
and walk down the aisle and sit down, my heart
begins to thud because people are looking, then not looking, at us.
We are the only white people there.
1988
I am 27. I walk into a church for the wedding of
Sara. She is a friend, a co-worker,
a fellow accountant at the State Auditor’s Office.
And when I walk in and walk down the aisle
and sit down, my heart begins to thud
because something is similar, something is wrong,
people are looking, then not looking, at us.
We are the only white people there.
2020
And my mind races to find the puzzle pieces
as a despot’s robot army marches on people
who are protesting the murders of men—
murders because of the color of their skin.
An obscene scene of spleen sent by
a President who is more mean than man,
sending a smokescreen to make a show
that is the only way he knows.
And my heart thuds and my mind races to find the puzzle pieces:
1968, 1988, 2020,
and I look back and ask
Sara, where were the other people from the office?
Why did none of them come to your wedding?
During workdays, we all worked together.
During lunches, we ate out together.
During out-of-town audits, we travelled together.
My God, Sara, I remember back then
I heard one or two excuses
busy, kids . . . but most had no kids—
most of our co-workers were single, and white.
Oh, Sara, how blind have I been?
Laura Grevel is a performance poet, blogger, and fiction writer. She began performing in the 1990s in Texas, has performed in Austria and Switzerland, and since 2018 often in the East Midlands, United Kingdom. During the pandemic, Laura has been working to make performance videos for online YouTube viewing. She also participates in many international Zoom poetry open mics and events. She is a cofounder of Poets For Refugees, which has a 2021 collaborative video welcoming refugees, migrants, and immigrants, titled “Girl Walking Across Europe.”
Washington Still Plays Games With My Roll
Posted April 2, 2022
By Tabassam Shah
New potus in town
he doesn’t make my brow permanently wrinkle
and my continuous scowl has released from my face
But Washington still plays games
We can in this moment rectify injustices
We can put an end to corporate ecocide
Corporate genocide
But Washington still plays games
We can divert the fear
that turns into hate
tell HERstory and HIStory with authenticity
so we can build the nation on equity
But Washington still plays games
In the midst of a pandemic
The one percent is living in a new decadence
Benefiting from everyone else’s misfortunes
To perpetuate this cycle
Washington still plays games
I can hear the teeth in the gears of time
come to a halt
we stand in the precipice
wedged between progress and regression
this living presents challenges
as we witness injustice after injustice
how can we not allow it to consume our light?
Tabassam Shah is a community activist living in western Pennsylvania, where she works to bring progressive rural voices into the mainstream conversation about improving local communities. She began writing poetry as a young teen to contend with feeling different (as a child of Pakistani immigrants) from her peers while growing up in the foothills of southern Appalachia. Through poetry, her emphasis on difference eventually gave way to a focus on the similarities within humanity across the globe. She is working on a poetry manuscript, enjoys collaborating with writers not only local but also far and wide, and has published poetry in The Watershed Journal and The Bridge Literary Arts Journal.
Bloody Sunday
Posted March 7, 2022
By Patricia Thrushart
There’s a bridge where they marched
arms linked
and they thought it led to justice
to reckoning
to awakening
but instead
they were
met with beatings
and bloodshed,
unconscionably
left unconscious,
thwarted
as surely as if the bridge
had buckled and in its twisting horror
plunged into the dark river below.
Patricia Thrushart has published four books, Little Girl Against The Wall, Yin and Yang, Sanctity: Poems from Northern Appalachia, and Inspired: Poetry from Underground Railroad Testimonies. Her work appears regularly in The Watershed Journal, a regional literary magazine of northwestern Pennsylvania, and on the website North/South Appalachia. Her poems have been published in Tiny Seed, Clarion University’s Tobeco, Still Point Arts Quarterly, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Feminine Collective, Curating Alexandria, High Shelf Press, and Northern Appalachia Review. Her nonfiction book, Cursed, was published by Adelaide Press in December 2021. She is a cofounder of Poets Against Racism USA.
My Flag
Posted February 15, 2022
By Manjit Sahota
My flag has no edge or borders
It doesn’t make me stand up salute
It doesn’t give me orders
My flag is the colour of a bloodstain
Some lost in battle, some still in vain
My flag is not a football slogan
Or a reason to learn to hate
My flag is the difference in humanity
something to celebrate
My flag is for my children and for your children too
My flag is for the many, not for the privileged few
My flag is not owned by kings or queens
Or by the nation state
My flag says break these mental chains; my flag says liberate
My flag has no spread eagle, yellow star or rising sun
My flag is an open heart, there’s room for everyone
My flag is not on the side of a bank or on the dollar bill
My flag has never declared war, my flag doesn’t know how to kill
My flag is not made of gold or diamonds, nor does it smell of oil
My flag waves in the streets below in the hands
Of struggle and toil
My flag is not the history of rulers passed
It’s the history we’ve yet to write
My flag is not here to add to the darkness
My flag is here to bring you the light
My flag is my mother’s tongue
Although not here to see
My flag is not here to keep you out
My flag is here to set you free!
Manjit Sahota is a poet in Nottingham, United Kingdom, and cofounder of Poets Against Racism (PAR) in the UK. Manjit has performed in a number of venues in Nottingham and around the country since 2016. In 2019 he had the pleasure of hosting and sharing the stage with Linton Kwesi Johnson at the Nottingham Poetry Festival. Manjit formed PAR in 2016 to rally poets, spoken-word artists, and rappers to use their poetry to challenge the rise in racism and spread the word of unity, humanity, and love. Manjit views poetry as “the memory of our history, struggle, and resistance.”
As I Turned I Woke
Posted January 25, 2022
By Girard Tournesol
I’d heard about problems with police. Hard to hear harder to believe
Personally I never had a problem. Oh, a few well deserved speeding tickets
probably cut a break, no definitely. I drove very fast, especially in the turns
Roll-the-tires fast in the turns that was me and the more I heard
the faster I turned
As a young kid I applied and was accepted to six colleges, six-for-six piece of cake
Why the stress? My SAT score equated to an I.Q. of 1 above plant life
Accepted open arms those WASPs loved me. Graduate school one-for-one
best in the country, bar none, MBA with honors. That was easy
They called it the golden passport. Yes! Passports are even faster
I never had problems with band-aids, the bank, the insurance company,
the healthcare system
Never turned down for a credit card, car loan, life insurance policy or request for a specialist
Experience is the best teacher and the more I learned the less I wanted to know
and the faster I turned
Then I learned about certain specifics
certain policies with regard to traffic stops, bank loans, rental property, health care
voting rights, marriage. Read The Color Purple
and then that invaluable government syphilis experiment
that would have been inconceivable even to Doctor Mengele
That the star-spangled banner has more than one stanza
Really there were four stanzas?
MY country ’tis of ME and it was making me feel dirty
Learned that no one voluntarily held that flag up that hellish night
o’er the ramparts WE watched
as slave and freedmen were ordered to their near certain death
with the threat of absolute certain death
Then I watched a cop shoot a kid in the back, in cold blood, near a merry-go-round
on a playground in Baltimore Maryland
I liked Baltimore
Fast, very fast, he emptied the 10 round clip of a semi-automatic 9mm Glock 27
into THAT kid’s back. No hesitation murder
Baltimore Baltimore Baltimore Baltimore
I hit the brakes hard on those fast decades and decades
generations generations generations of turning
I slowed down, way way way down. Stopped
Took a deep deep deeper breath
Then did what I always did and do best
I turned turned turned, I turned around and as I turned I woke
to kneel
Girard Tournesol has written almost daily for 45 years and published a book series, Psalms of Fern, in two volumes: Little Whittlings of Soul and Time Travelers. His poetry has appeared in regional and national literary magazines, including The Watershed Journal, The Bridge Literary Arts Journal, Clarion University’s Tobeco Literary Journal, RUNE, Adelaide Literary Journal, Pennsylvania Poetry Society’s PENNESSENCE, Poet’s Choice Awards, and Tiny Seed. Girard’s work has also been published online in Dark Horse Appalachia, The Indiana Gazette, and North/South Appalachia. His next project is a fusion of poetry, memoir, and fiction inspired by growing up in a Northern Appalachia coal town.
Lessons at Carlisle Indian Industrial School (1879-1918)
Posted January 4, 2022
By Wayne H. Swanger
Lesson 1:
Oblivious, Little Bear sat,
A front row seat,
Dead center,
While Black Robe wielded
His chalk stone like a saber,
Slashing violently
Letters on the slate.
Many flinched,
The youngest cried,
Little Bear sat stone-faced,
No different than he looks
In this old photograph.
Lesson 2:
Oblivious to Little Bear,
Black Robe wielded
His chalk stone
Like a knife cruelly carving
Words on the slate.
Letters white, exact, uniform,
Exemplars for the unsaved
Mourners with shorn heads
And leather-shod feet:
BOUNCE
POUNCE
TROUNCE
Look! Rhyming words!
Do you hear the music
Of your new language?
Say them!
Little Bear remained mute,
Preferring the music of the old:
LAKOTA
DAKOTA
NAKOTA
He chanted this music
Deep within
So Black Robe would not beat
A steady rhythm
On his back
Once again.
Lesson 3:
Oblivious to Little Bear,
Black Robe pulled
His chalk stone
From his pocket like a gun
And banged on the slate.
These rhyming words
Are verbs. Action words!
Read them!
BOUNCE
POUNCE
TROUNCE
Little Bear did not read.
He knew these things.
Coyote, big cat and fox
Had taught him just
As Sitting Bull had shown
Yellow Hair and his soldiers
At Little Big Horn.
Lesson 4:
Oblivious to Little Bear,
Black Robe became a soldier
Of a different sort.
His weapons were scissors,
Leather boots, textbooks,
Discipline and education.
He sought to kill the Indian
And save the Man.
The tally?
One hundred fifty-eight graduates,
One hundred-eighty graves.
The killing was easy;
The saving less so.
Wayne Swanger, a native Pennsylvanian, has published in Friends Journal and other Quaker publications as well as regional literary journals including The Watershed Journal, Tobeco, and The Bridge Literary Arts Journal. He recently published his first book of poetry, Fields of His Heart (The Watershed Journal Literary Group, 2020).
Athena Naked on the Streets of Portland
Posted December 4, 2021
By Patricia Thrushart
Did you see that night how
she strode spearless across the wet
pavement at 3rd and Taylor,
golden skin glistening in the glare
of police floodlights;
how she paced and how she danced,
refusing the shield thrust at her
by a protester who
mistakenly thought that she
was the one
who was vulnerable.
After pirouettes and pliés,
arabesques, and an efface,
she sat down in the grimy crosswalk
across from the line of armored men,
and she spread her virgin legs in the smoke
like a warrior.
We all became her acolytes then,
ready to worship as
her unhelmeted,
unadorned body
held
her enemies at bay.
Poet and author Patricia Thrushart has published four books, Little Girl Against The Wall, Yin and Yang, Sanctity: Poems from Northern Appalachia, and Inspired: Poetry From Underground Railroad Testimonies. Her work appears regularly in The Watershed Journal, a regional literary magazine of northwestern Pennsylvania, and on the website North/South Appalachia. Her poems have been published in Tiny Seed, Clarion University’s Tobeco, The Avocet, Still Point Arts Quarterly, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Feminine Collective, Curating Alexandria, High Shelf Press, and Northern Appalachia Review. She is a cofounder of Poets Against Racism USA.