notes for a 2019 poem


Notes for a 2019 Poem

Be afraid.  Tricentennial masquerade is over.

2019 is the year, surely you can recall, 1919

will interrogate, by dint of academic obscurity,

the rites, the riots, the reasons

in domestic terror, treachery, and treasons.

Render unto its gold-plated idol/icon of a god

her properties and lynch her with prayers of love.

Close readings of close reading of closest readings.



History is a deck of twelve aces.

It is everybody's business  and nobody's fault.



Literate tongues drool, explicate and exorcise.



Let there be light, pain-filled recovery of intelligence.

There is no sanctuary for a Red Summer,

a Red Scare, a Red reading of a near truth.

Waves of molasses wash Boston when telephones emit no sound.

The Jass Age begins with renaissance

of bathroom gin and bedroom sin

and the signing of Amendment 18.

When tiny rain taps a tin roof

anarchy, espionage, and  ethnic washing of whiteness begin

in misruling of the law, the tragedy of knife and saw invading flesh and bone.

Close readings of closer reading of closest readings.





Yes, Cleveland is in this room

in conversation with

Mississippi hamlets, towns, and mansions,

Charleston, Chicago, and Elaine,

and Felix the Cat and Rastus the Rat

and mind-freezing visuals

of Ripley's song: believe it or not.

Yes, the hurricane of the Florida Keys

shall sing classical hip hop blues of  what wasn't terminal

in 76 lynchings and 25 riots

as the Treaty of Versailles

persuaded black socks and white to make a travesty of baseball

and any sport a mind conceived

when the North is South and the South is North

and East confused with West.



In the ides of March

the infant Nat King Cole

sang the sweet rue of just how

unforgettable the world would be,

a fit prelude

for Toomer's talk of Cain

and Anne Spencer's analysis of Abel

on her Lynchburg kitchen table.



Did woman of no color scurry down her pedestal

to embrace Amendment 19 and tell lies about Malindy's song

as her sisters douched like whores of hate

and  trafficked in transgendered sex,

as her brothers gaily deployed tree, rope, chains,

guns, fires, corkscrews, tar, and other tools of torture

and barked lies of rapes that never were ?

Close readings of closest reading of closest readings.





Tell once more the American story

of transcendent glory

in a human barbeque, digital this time.



Tell yet once more

the details (sordid and sour)  of the 1919 story

that 2019 must ingest and vomit

in abject veneration

for the trinity of ear, genitals, and eye

in the drugstore jar

and for bodies in aesthetic disarray  on postal cards.

Tell yet once more

Close readings of close reading of closest readings.



History is a deck of twelve aces.

It is everybody's business  and nobody's fault.







Jerry W. Ward, Jr.                            December 8, 2018












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