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Borderlands

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Editor’s note: This poem is part of our #SpreadTheWord poem of the week series, featuring works based on Injustice Watch reporting. This poem was inspired by the article, “Immigration detention deaths reach the highest total since 2009”. For more poetry in this series, click here. point to a spot
call it home

—
I will show you a person
unable to live there

put a sign over the tent
label it
sanctuary

—
guns will be at the entrance
to keep out anyone

wrestle a place
of welcome
out of palm trees
clean water flowing
for all

—
boundaries will be drawn
for halves and have-not

do you know of a
paradise
where we can be
loved

I withdraw to fire escapes
terrified lonely
counting all the gatekeepers
except me

no need for countries now we’re not safe
anywhere

 

Atreyee Gupta explores the liminal spaces of nature, culture, and identity. Atreyee writes about travel and its transformative experiences at Bespoke Traveler.

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Born From Guilt

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Editor’s note: This poem is part of our #SpreadTheWord poem of the week series, featuring work by Chicago artists based on Injustice Watch reporting, and inspired by the reports, “From prison, Rico Clark fights a murder conviction and COVID-19” and “Cops Around The Country Are Posting Racist And Violent Comments On Facebook”.  For more poetry in this series, click here. Laugh, don’t play

Speak, but don’t say what you know, you know nothing

One beautiful day ended with a whimper. Freedom wailed when iron chains bound it to the ground. Underneath rich soil, a once strong root petrified and crumbled. Cloaked by pressure, buried by power, reinforced by fear, enforced through dread

Red, sweet apple turned sour

It only took an hour, for the growth to be stunted, for sight to be blinded, to surrender

Without asking why?

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Silent Injustice

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Editor’s note: This poem is part of our #SpreadTheWord poem of the week series, featuring work by Chicago artists based on Injustice Watch reporting, and inspired by the commentary, ‘Cook County Jail Election Guide Rejection Harms Voters and The Free Press’. For more poetry in this series, click here. (a reflection on “Cook County Jail Election Guide Rejection Harms Voters and The Free Press”)

A thousand calls for justice
a thousand chances to give a thousand voices
Rejected–mistakenly

Freedom of speech,
freedom to read
a thousand times denied

Apologies flow like run off stormwater
Flooding our sewers

Violations mounting
an infinite barrage blocking justice
each new transgression surprises,
a shocking hiccup—
like the fifth hiccup in a series of hiccups

The pregnant pause between them
hinting at hope
making each successive glitch
worse than the one before,

Who’s to blame when
honorable men forget to
honor the people? Jaime Grookett is a MFA Candidate at Drexel University and teaches college composition. She is a Fiction Editor at Paper Dragon, Drexel University’s graduate-run literary magazine.

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SuperBlackGirl

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Editor’s note: This poem is part of our #SpreadTheWord poem of the week series, featuring work by Chicago artists based on Injustice Watch reporting. The poem was inspired by our ‘Essential Work’ series. For more poetry in this series, click here. Fly high super black girl.       Being a black girl in America is like tiptoeing through a lion’s den with sliced achilles.

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In it

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Editor’s note: This poem is part of our #SpreadTheWord poem of the week series, featuring work by Chicago artists based on Injustice Watch reporting. The poem was inspired by our co-published article with The Triibe, ‘Analysis: Black Chicago youth are disenchanted by 2020 election options, but hope for a progressive future’. For more poetry in this series, click here. We’re all in this together
since
we’re all in this together
until
we’re all not in this together
because after
we’re not in this together… we will surely
fall

apart.

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The Ideal World

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Editor’s note: This poem is part of our #SpreadTheWord poem of the week series, featuring work by Chicago artists based on Injustice Watch reporting. The poem was inspired by the commentary, ‘Listen: Youth organizers discuss Black joy, West Side history and the future.’ For more poetry in this series, click here. It is not some café on the Mediterranean glittering in the sun, the ocean breezes of the spring, the smell of coffee,
it is not Yo-Yo Ma and Peter Serkin wordlessly letting us in on the intimate partly improvised conversation that is the sonata,

it is not the clamor and jabber of eighty thousand cranes after they have glided to a stop on the marshy lake, having plunged and swooped down in silent descent from the heavens,

nor the fear-filled bravery of those who face down the instruments of tyranny until the
opposing phalanxes dissipate in the clear air of morning,

nor the seemly colloquy of honest adversaries,

nor the bubble within which we cultivate kindness to our own,–

but a crowded bus on the way home from a demonstration and a child no older than three in her mother’s arms yelling the contagious chant, “The people demand social justice.”

 

Bernard Horn’s new collection of poems, Love’s Fingerprints, has been praised by Major Jackson, Carl Dennis, and Prageeta Sharma. His first collection, Our Daily Words, was a finalist for the 2011 Massachusetts Book Award in Poetry.