Status Updates From The Essential June Jordan (...

it’s hard to keep a clean shirt clean

‘what’s anyone of us to do / about what’s done’

‘water as transparent / as a wish the moon stayed out / all day’

last poem for a little while

‘holidays do loosen up the holocaust’

‘i would go pray a sorrow Songmy song / but the last time i looked the american flag was flying / from the center of the crucifix.’

focus in real time

‘a bowl of rice / as food / as politics / of metaphor / as something valuable and good / or something common to consume/exploit/ignore’

‘who will sit beside the bowl or fight for rice / who will write about the hands that hold the bowl / who will want to own the land / a bow of rice’

poem about my rights

‘i am not wrong; wrong is not my name’

who look at me

‘(when they finally sit down / who will stand up /for them?)’

‘i am // impossible to explain / remote from the old and new interpretations / and yet / not exactly’

‘see me darkly covered ribs / around my heart across my skull / thin skin protects the part / that dulls from longing’

‘to begin is no more agony / than opening your hand’

"On the Black Family" -
..
against the tyrannical soldierly sins
of the ones who beautify plastic and steel
and who fly themselves high on the failure to feel

...a middle-American of
moderate means with a two-car family
that is falling apart in a respectable
civilized
falling apart
mind-your-manners manner

"Moving towards Home" - a very powerful poem on The Sabra and Shatila Massacre (September 16–18 1982)

"Case in Point" - "silence peculiar to the female", silence of a woman being raped

"Letter to the Local Police" - absolutely love!

"Letter to the Local Police" - absolutely love!