Lolita Stewart-White (Florida): “In 2007, I read a haunting newspaper article about the FBI reopening 100 unsolved Civil Rights cold cases. These cases, entitled ‘The Forgotten,’ involved black people who were murdered during the Civil Rights movement. Their stories moved me to write a series of poems. It is my small way of preserving the memory of Willie Edwards and others.”
Joel F. Johnson (Georgia): “I often write poems using an assumed voice. In daily life, I tend to be pathologically nice. Writing poetry provides a refreshing opportunity to be bitter, angry, peevish and cruel.” (web)
“Poem for the Educated Black Woman Who Asked My Opinion on Shared Suffering” by Leslie Marie AguilarPosted by Rattle
Leslie Marie Aguilar
POEM FOR THE EDUCATED BLACK WOMAN WHO ASKED MY OPINION ON SHARED SUFFERING
Not to belong anywhere in particular means somehow an ability to go anywhere in general, but always as a tourist, an outsider. —from Carl Phillips’ foreword to Slow Lightning
I nurse my Shiner Bock, in an Indiana bar,
because even though I hate Shiner
the lemon floating at the top of my glass
is a life raft—a wedge of soggy yellow
membranes that carry me back home
down I-20 through Abilene, Weatherford,
Fort Worth, and Dallas where I am the majority
not the minority—but the bitter brown
liquid slides down the back of my throat
like the grains of sand that stick to my lips
during a dust storm. My cells are the same
as your cells, your cells are the same as my cells,
our cells are the same as everyone’s cells, but
here, I am a stain on a laundered white sheet
dancing a cumbia no one else can hear.
In Texas, we use barbed wire as clotheslines
and cactus for hair brushes. We walk barefoot
over freshly mowed grass and let the caliche
make molds of our footprints. In Texas,
tough skin is a product of spit, Goldbond,
and walking it off. We are the same, but
alcohol makes my mouth faster than my brain,
and I agree. We is a federation of bodies that are tired
Leslie Marie Aguilar (Texas): “I was born and raised in Abilene, TX, and am currently an MFA candidate at Indiana University. As a displaced Texan I have successfully managed to ostracize myself in Indiana by using the collective ‘you’ in public. When I’m not writing poems about the winds of the Panhandle, I teach creative writing to uninterested students. However, the expression of understanding on their faces when they finally reassemble Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘One Art’ on large pieces of blue poster board from strips of paper and glue sticks makes me want to teach poetry, and more importantly to write it.” (website)
