THE SENTENCING OF MICHAEL SLAGER

by Harold Oberman

Judy Scott holds a photo of her son Walter Scott on Thursday after Michael Slager, a former police officer who shot and killed Mr. Scott in 2015 after a traffic stop, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for violating Mr. Scott’s civil rights. Credit: Credit Randall Hill/Reuters via The New York Times, December 7, 2017

I went to middle school with him,
Walter Scott.  He was a year behind
And, as to his details, I don't remember.
I just don't remember.

I pulled out an old Annual after the shooting.
Wallace Middle School.  New Horizons. 1979.
My parents sent me there against the advice of their peers.
"Violence," they said, "had happened,"
The past year.  Middle school violence
In the Seventies.  A big brawl, perhaps a stabbing
At the most.  So antique.

38 years later, Walter Scott’s shot in the back.
The cop got 20 years.
Violence does not have a half-life
That diminishes over time
Or a blood-red glow that grows dimmer,
Though we wish it did.

He wears a large-collared shirt in the Annual.
I can't tell its colors.
The photos, back then, were all black and white.

Harold Oberman is a lawyer working and writing in Charleston, SC. His first poem was published in middle school and, subsequently, he has had his work published in TheNewVerse.News.

NO LOVE IN THIS LABOR

by Amber Miller

Awards season wouldn’t be complete without the requisite number of controversies, and it got an early one last week when Universal announced it would submit the thriller “Get Out” for a Golden Globe in the comedy category. The film’s writer-director, Jordan Peele, immediately communicated his disappointment, tweeting, “‘Get Out’ is a documentary.” Although he later moderated his reaction, he maintained that to categorize his directorial debut as a comedy is to fatally misunderstand the seriousness of the movie, in which a young African American man is existentially threatened by a Stepford-like liberal white family in the suburbs. “The reason for the visceral response to this movie being called a comedy is that we are still living in a time in which African American cries for justice aren’t being taken seriously,” Peele explained in a statement. “It’s important to acknowledge that though there are funny moments, the systemic racism that the movie is about is very real. More than anything, it shows me that film can be a force for change. At the end of the day, call ‘Get Out’ horror, comedy, drama, action or documentary, I don’t care. Whatever you call it, just know it’s our truth.” —The Washington Post, November 23, 2017

You start to believe this is your fate
Harassment and abuse
Murder and beatings, lynching—we are skinned
To be worn like the fur of animals
Stripped of everything that makes us human
We reek of slave labor, blood, sweat
They kill us so they can be us
They want to absorb our resilience
They pave our roads to the grave with imprisonment
If these walls could talk
They wouldn’t because
They are traumatized by how much violence
Black bodies have seen
You start to believe this is your fate
When you are persecuted and used the day you are born
And God’s ear has gone deaf to our silent screaming


Amber Miller is  studying teacher education in the Midwest. Miller's work has been featured in Aois 21 publishing, and makingqueerhistory.com.

AMERICAN HISTORY X REVISITED

by Alan Catlin





He was the self-proclaimed
president of the United States
of the Stupid.  Alt-Right Fight
Club pioneer made famous/
gone viral, for punching out
a 95 pound woman with a
Love Trumps Hate sign.
Directed the dragging of a black
man to a parking garage to be
beaten by cowards with face masks.
All the better not to see you.
Not to provide that all important
positive ID.
Has tattooed 88 on the backs of
both hands, numbers that represent
the letter H as in the phrase
Heil Hitler.
Exhorts others to Join or Die at
rallies in places like Charlottesville.
Buys a brace of tiki lights for hate
parades around statues of traitors
and riot shields for get-togethers
after rallies where things often are
wet and wild and totally out of
control.
Is Extreme everything: right wing,
radicalized, white hood wearing
and proud of it.
Brings guns to a peace rally in case
Grannies Against the War go rogue
and attack: “The only good gray panther
is a dead one.”
Thinks the Four Horsemen of
the Apocalypse are: Robert Lee, Jeff Davis,
Stonewall Jackson and Bedford Forrest.
Says the Civil War has just begun.
May even have been the guy who
fired the first shot.


Alan Catlin is poetry editor of online journal misfitmagazine.net. His latest book of poetry is American Odyssey from Future Cycle Press.

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT VIOLENCE

by Diane Elayne Dees

Carrie Matula hugs a woman who lost her father in a mass shooting at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, on Sunday, Nov. 5, 2017. Matula said she saw and heard everything as it happened from the gas station where she works just a block away. (Nick Wagner / American-Statesman via AP via Yahoo!)

Some were on the sidewalk,
some were at a concert,
some were in a needless war,
some were in a laboratory cage,
some were living in a house of rage and sadism,
some were in a church,
some were in a car when the police showed up,
some spent their lives in tiny, cramped pens,
some were at school,
some were in a house with monster parents,
some were raised only to be on your plate
at the prayer breakfast, where you begged for peace.
All longed for freedom.
None wanted pain.
All wanted to live.

Diane Elayne Dees’s poems have been published in many journals and anthologies. Diane, who lives in Louisiana, also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that covers women’s professional tennis throughout the world.