We Are Remarkably Loud Not Masked

by Juan Felipe Herrera

young Jesse Washington —
                                  even though you     on the wooden stick
cross of fire bitten charred cut & burned        5 minute jury
April 15, 1916    Waco, Texas shackled & dragged — lynched
                                                You live on

                                                                Trayvon Martin face down
red juice on the lawn clutching candy rushing home
the hoodie the hoodie the prowler shooter said
upside down shredded night

                                                                              because of you     you

we march touch hands lean back leap forth
against the melancholy face of tanks & militia    we move
                                                              walk become
we become           somehow

Eric Garner we scribble your name sip your breath    now
               our breath cannot be choked off our
skin cannot be flamed      totality
                                      cannot be cut off
each wrist
each bone
cannot be chained to the abyss
               gnashing levers & polished
                                   killer sheets of steel

we are remarkably loud not masked
                rough river colors that cannot be threaded back

hear us
Freddie Gray here                                         with us

                                          Jesse Washington Trayvon Martin
Michel Brown the Black Body holy
    Eric Garner  all breath Holy
we weep & sing
as we write
                             as we mobilize & march
                                  under the jubilant solar face

Juan Felipe Herrera, “We Are Remarkably Loud Not Masked” from Notes on the Assemblage (City Lights Books, 2015). Copyright © 2015 by Juan Felipe Herrera.

Most Poetry will post a poem by a poet of color, selected by our members, each day through the month of July.

Another Heaven

by Mai Der Vang

I am but atoms
Of old passengers

Bereaved to my cloistered bones.

This rotation is my recipe,
The telling of every edition

As a landscape on slow windshields.
The body no longer

                                   Baskets fatigue,
No envelopes with oxygen left to cure.

When funeral recites
The supper gardens of my forefathers,
Cross-stitch from my mother kin,

                        Then I will come to you

Dressed in my armor of earth,
Ready as you chant my tale.

            When I reach the sloped halls
           And hammock sun,

I won’t tell why the split orchid
Falls behind. Instead,
                                  I tell why it arrives.

From Afterland by Mai Der Vang, Graywolf Press, ©2017

Most Poetry will post a poem by a poet of color, selected by our members, each day through the month of July.

Remember

by Joy Harjo

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

Copyright ©1983 by Joy Harjo from SHE HAD SOME HORSES. Joy Harjo was appointed the new United States poet laureate in June 2019, and is the first Native American Poet Laureate in the history of the position.

Most Poetry will post a poem by a poet of color, selected by our members, each day through the month of July.

Kimchi

by Franny Choi

My parents’ love for each other
was pickled in the brine of 1980,
spent two decades fermenting

in an air-tight promise.
Their occasional salt caught
a slow fever, began to taste like

a buried secret. They choked
in each other’s vinegar, dug for pockets
of fresh-cut love, once green and whole,

now a shrunken head, floating.
Every night, she pulls it, messy and
barehanded, out of the jar, slices it

into slivers, and we all swallow,
smiling through the acrid burden
kicking in our throats.

From FLOATING, BRILLIANT, GONE by Franny Choi. Write Bloody Publishing, 2014.

Most Poetry will post a poem by a poet of color, selected by our members, each day through the month of July.

We Wear the Mask

by Paul Laurence Dunbar

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
      We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
      We wear the mask!

Paul Laurence Dunbar, from THE COMPLETE POEMS OF PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR. Dodd, Mead and Company, 1925

Most Poetry will post a poem by a poet of color, selected by our members, each day through the month of July.