Issue no. 1
June 2020
June Contributors
George Floyd
Clare Chu
Keith Holyoak
Joel Kabakov
Ericka Kerr
Nicole La Follette
Leopoldo Seguel
Koon Woon
a monthly art/political Ezine
where artists go to work
in hard timesArt as in how imagination and skill expresses important ideas or feelings. Political as in how power in society is both achieved, used and abused.
Our first issue is dedicated to honoring George Floyd and using artistic expression to help end racism and all abuses of power. As Keith Ellison said, “The world of arts and entertainment can use their cultural influence to inspire change that we need.”
"To be an artist, means never to avert one's eyes."
Akira Kurosawa
“We can try to make it so everyone can breathe'“
Koon Woon
“This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”
Toni Morrison, March 2015
“We need arts and entertainment to help inspire us toward justice…The world of arts and entertainment can use their cultural influence to inspire change that we need. There is a role for all who dream of a justice that we haven’t yet experienced.”
Keith Ellison, Minnesota AG, June 2020
I’ll tell you what Freedom is to me.
No fear.”
Nina Simone
Terror in the Twin Cities
Joel Kabakov
Chauvin took a knee
on a man’s artery
nine minutes pinned his head
nine minutes he was dead
Colin took a knee
to set his people free
no time for silence
no time to “wait and see”
when all our grievances
fall like dead leaves in the night
when we see the hatred
when we walk alone with fright
we won’t let our kids grow up
in pain and suffering
bring on love and justice
it’s the only thing
strong man stood before us
threatened us with lead
didn’t matter to him
so many of us dead
all the burned out buildings
stretching block to block
all the seconds ticking
on the doomsday clock
the best lives lost forever
no chance to be free
no time for silence
no time to “wait and see”
Racism Kills
Leopoldo Seguel
ok if i smoke
yes i said
in consideration
she sat by the window
exhaling, her head
to the side
steering the smoke away
from my lungs
you know, i said
someday, smoking’s
going to kill you
she looked at me, carefully
in a soft firm voice
smoking won’t kill me
racism will
later so I wouldn’t forget
borrowed from H. Rap Brown
learn, white man, learn
see things right
While excruciating and raw, reading the transcript of George Floyd’s last words uttered, under the knee of a white police officer, stands on it own as a potent reminder of why we must work for the cause of justice for All beings.
It is George Floyd’s words, his life as a Black man in America, and unmitigated death that have inspired us to achieve justice and more lasting change through our art. The struggle and anguish of more than 400 years of systemic racism in the United States must… end… now.
As Elie Wiesel, Nobel prize winner and Holocaust survivor once said, “A word is worth a thousand pictures.”
127 Words 8 Minutes 46 Seconds
George Floyd
It's my face man
I didn't do nothing serious man
please
please
please I can't breathe
please man
please somebody
please man
I can't breathe
I can't breathe
please
(inaudible)
man can't breathe, my face
just get up
I can't breathe
please, a knee on my neck
I can't breathe
shit
I will
I can't move
mama
mama
I can't
my knee
my neck
I'm through
I'm through
I'm claustrophobic
my stomach hurts
my neck hurts
everything hurts
some water or something
please
please
I can't breathe officer
don't kill me
they gonna kill me, man
come on man
I cannot breathe
I cannot breathe
they’re gonna kill me
they’re gonna kill me
I can't breathe
I can't breathe
please sir
please
please
please I can't breathe
Confinement
Clare Chu
Over sixty (high risk they say),
my days alone are managed over the phone,
in conversations with family and friends.
This morning from his apartment
in Chinatown, LA. my son calls,
his tears cup in my hands.
‘Mom, how long does the virus live on your skin?
A man spat on me today,
called me chink,
told me to fuck off back to China.
Mom, do you know why the media
don’t show us how
we’re going to die from it?
Don’t tell us our lungs disintegrate,
don’t show on our screens
a mother in her hospital bed,
her head flopped sideways,
hearing a rush of blood into her lungs,
as her heart stops.
Mom, stay your tears and listen to me.’
Gettysburg
Keith Holyoak
Fourth of July, blue lookouts hold their posts
On Cemetery Ridge. Much has changed
The past three days—above, young rebel ghosts
Lament; below, cannon have rearranged
Limbs of men and horses. Summer rains
Cleanse the field of slave power, bugles sound
Freedom rising. Those who forged the chains,
Or broke them, take their quarrel underground.
On Decoration Day the children place
Lilies and lilacs on the soldiers’ graves;
Rolling down grassy mounds from monuments
They play together, smiles of every race.
Beneath the Copse of Trees a father waves—
A change has come, a moment’s innocence.
Monsters, Criminals and Liars
Ericka Kerr
You say we’re MONSTERS, but I do not believe you.
You say we’re CRIMINALS, but I have no PROOF.
You put us in jail THINKING you got it all right, but you’re WRONG.
You BEAT us up with LIES telling us we did it, but we DO NOT, we DID NOT, and we WILL NOT!
Once you see who it is, you are already too late. Once you see what a fool you have made of yourself, you are already too late because you put us in that death penalty you made.
We’re like that monster under your bed, except you keep SHOOTING until we’re DEAD.
We are not scared of your weapons, we fear for our children who will grow up FIGHTING like we do, but then, shot for just walking down the street.
Who’s the CRIMINAL now?
Who’s the MONSTER now?
Who’s the LIAR now?
Because we certainly AREN’T.
We certainly WEREN’T.
And we certainly WON’T EVER BE.
We have had it, and we will FIGHT until that KNEE is off our NECK!
(See video of Ericka reading her poem at a West Seattle demonstration)
Ghost Shadows, Earth Bodies
Nicole La Follette
Walking up a city street, I approach a man approaching me.
Our Earth Brains anticipating how it’ll go down.
His darkened skin carries a dream to be seen
maybe not directly in the eyes but not averted.
Here on this sidewalk where we intersect, no crossing of the street.
See, I dream to be witness to the glorious pride in his approach:
confident gait, shoulders broad, sheer panther in his natural state
without the posturing walls between us.
I prefer Duchenne smiles with the people that I greet.
To look past a past to when our ‘otherness’ was celebrated.
In the midst of these societal hurricanes,
Our Ghost Shadows meet in the still in between.
Ghost Shadow hands extend offerings:
Handshake, fist bump, soft pat on the shoulder.
Ghost Shadow voices in silent thought bubbles above scream tiredly:
“I’m so tired of this bullshit.”
Earth body voices back on the street proffer: “Hey.”
“Hey.” Up nod of our heads, slightest glance, us passers-by.
Our backs now face each other, on our ways.
Blues and reds of black and white flash. Our walks on pause, we turn to see.
Earth eyes reflect gazes once more. But our minds jot different notes of this pop-up
audited lecture. Would that these lights signaled our victories, not violations for the
speed at which we travel to attain our dreams. Blues and reds drive by.
How I wish your skin was never threatened by a badge. Please know that I defend your
basic right to exist, deflect all badges with these fucking white privilege quasi-magical
wrist bracelets welded on me at birth, the ones I didn’t ask for but there they are, how
on these shoulders I carry all the baggage my minority female comes with, too, so
when you see me coming, please know, I hate their weight, cuz they are shackles of
their own.
Ghost Shadow hands high-five. Ghost Shadow voices rise in ‘Alleluia.’
Ghost Shadow shoulders drop with easy sighs to meet, I and I together. Let our Ghost
Shadows descend into our holy Earth Bodies here. And not across the street.
To hear Nicole read her poem http://picturesofpoets.com/Poets/nicole-renee-la-follette/
Fiction and Nonfiction
Koon Woon
Ernest Hemingway once said,
“If you want to read fiction, read
The Daily Racing Form,”
as he bet on horses with the inside dope in Spain.
In Amerika, politics is Fiction
and police power comes from the barrel of a gun!
That’s nonfiction.
Hunger traps you in your economic social class,
that again is nonfiction,
and oh, Lord, the poor get poorer.
Come on rich
boy, go take a shit
and sit on the Trump gold throne!
Everyman knows this and it is literally nonfiction.
But above all drama and pomp,
and despite Knopf and Sons’
literary fiction of the highest order,
nobody can best Donald Trump,
and all the shit that comes from his mouth,
it’s all lies, lies, pure fiction!
