The Hold

By Pat Andrus

For Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown, George Floyd, seven-year-old Aiyana Mo’Nay Stanley-Jones, Eric Garner, Dante Parker, Atatiana Jefferson, ninety-two-year-old Kathryn Johnston . . .

 

A broken baton
a dead rat
5 jailers with guns.
How the life loses its state
of pure being.
How a bone breaks
and one rose falls.

I live in my own isolation
chosen, without blood
smeared on my dreams.
And the color of weak
is a white picket fence,
a story painted with
craven words
and a rule
of division and
unequal equations.
Can the body
find its healing laws?
Can a language
bandage the sores
of a society’s broken moons?

The colors of red
and brown
and yellow
make possible for mended wounds
if the dam finally breaks
and washers clean
the bottoms of
twisted stories and
fallen guns,
of cracked memories
trying to bandage
a lie in
the histories of the burning white suns.

 


Pat Andrus, having just completed her third work of poetry Fragments of the Universe (but right prior to the pandemic), has fully settled into her new home, San Diego, California. An instructor for several years at Bellevue College outside Seattle, Andrus also served two years as an artist-in-residence for the state of Washington. She also was fortunate to study modern dance with Seattle-based choreographers and with choreographer Debra Hay for a four-month residency. Today you can find Pat co-coordinating two monthly Poetic Legacy Workshops with Christophver R, sharing her works with San Diego State University MFAers at the Wine Lovers monthly, singing with her spiritual center’s choir, and giving support when financially possible to Voices of our City and Border Angels.

Photo by Oscar Helgstrand on Unsplash .

“We have Eric Garner’s air in our lungs tonight” – Andrea Gibson

By Eve Lyons

 

1.    Justin Damico
Some say he’d just broken up a fight
Some say he was selling loosies
We’ve seen him hanging out here before
Always up to no good
Always looking to start trouble.
Damn you, Daniel, damn your pride.
Now we’re both stuck on desk duty.

2.    Ramsey Orta
We all got smart phones these days
We can all be journalists
Don’t matter anyway, even when we get it all on tape
Police officers’ word is bond.
Brown peoples’ word ain’t shit.
Three weeks later I’m the one arrested
While those murderers keep their jobs
No justice, no peace.

3.    William Bratton
I grew up in Dorchester in the 50s and 60s
Graduated Boston Technical High school,
went into the army. I paid my dues.
I’ve been police in two different cities,
ran the MBTA police for a spell.
I know my way around this kind of thing.
Being commissioner isn’t the same as being police
More politics than policing
My job is to make people feel safe,
believe the system isn’t rigged.
But these days I dine with the mayor.

4.    Eric Garner
“Every time you see me, you want to mess with me.
I’m tired of it. It stops today.
Everyone standing here will tell you
I didn’t do nothing. I did not sell nothing.
Because every time you see me,
you want to harass me.
You want to stop me selling cigarettes.
I’m minding my business, officer,
I’m minding my business.
Please just leave me alone
please just leave me alone.”

 


Eve Lyons is a poet whose work has appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies, including recently in Hip Mama, Dead Mule of Southern Literature, and the Jewish Literary Journal, as well as Lilith and Word Riot. Visit her website at evealexandralyons.wordpress.com.

Photo credit: Louis Lozowick’s lithograph Lynching, 1936, from The Smithsonian via a Creative Commons license.