Edited by Richard Stone
We have two poems this month, both from previously printed writers, both in still-pained response to our country’s racist legacy. The first is by Alfonso Hernandez of Three Rivers and the Porterville Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. Hernandez is a longtime teacher and supporter of the arts, as well as having an acute social conscience. “Palimpsest” refers to something written over something else that is still partly visible (I had to look it up, too). He says the poem arose after seeing the film Twelve Years a Slave, and then observing someone’s odd behavior in a public shower.
Palimpsest
By Alfonso Hernandez
What dirt do you insist in erasing from your soul
With precious hot water raining an hour when you shower?
What perversions and sins itch your skin
Requiring such scrubbing changing your body
From a Whiteman to a bloody Redman?
If your skin color offends you
Water will not clean your subconscious
You will never forget the crimes of your
English and German ancestors
The exploitation, the whippings, the lacerations
The hangings, the decapitations, the nerve gas
The dissolving of flesh and bones in viscous acid
Of Black, Jewish and Native aboriginals
One day you will run out of such scalding showers
And your body and soul will remain still a palimpsest.
Our second poet is Tim Young, currently housed in San Quentin. He has long fought for his exoneration and continues to write poetry that reflects on the cruelty and inequity of the criminal justice system of our country. Young can be reached at F23374 S.Q.S.P., San Quentin, CA 94974.
Starve the Beast
By Tim YoungPlantation toil, penitentiary moil,
Where slavery ends
The Prison Industrial Complex begins
Check your history
1863 to the 21st century
Wanton misery, no mystery,
Statistics quite frightening
Fraught with disparity…
African Americans constitute
12% of the nation,
50% of the prison population.
That’s mass incarceration
Modern day enslavement
Casting a wide net
Landing a big catch:
The poor, the black, the innocent…
Forever strange fruit
Courtrooms abound with black youth
Legal lynching ensues
The gavel is a noose
Freedom dismissed
American justice amiss
School to prison pipeline
Lucrative slave ship…
Dred Scott was the genesis
The aftermath stupendous
Millions of lost souls
Prison, probation, parole
Civil liberties on hold
Democracy untold
A dream deferred
Martin’s nightmare has emerged…
A better world is possible
Prison abolition is logical
Society holds the key
Time to manifest some destiny
Organize, mobilize,
Act in solidarity
Accomplish the feat
Starve the belly of the beast…
