Lana Hechtman Ayers
Dark Injustice
There are black men dangling
from the trees of California
and New York
like some new species of bird
that hangs by its neck
from the high branches,
a Corvid perhaps
given the fact the Jim Crow
has never ended in earnest.
Look, mama, says a small
white boy walking past
a special tree, that birdy’sgiving me a dirty look.
Mama drags him along,
murmuring more's the pityin this city.
Do we know how life
imitates death
in the guise of suicide,
someone’s vile idea of irony?
Here’s the news of yesteryear:
Lynching.
Here’s the news of yesterday:
Lynching.
Some claim a tree is just a tree
and the noose is a clever device
for black men to say farewell.
Hell is paved with trees
like the streets of America.
More protests do not equal
more progress.
The egress from racism is
no safe passage.
This is not a cause
but a call for conscience.
This is not about law
but morality.
This is not a subject
for neutrality.
Transforming human
into humane
is no simple addition of ‘e’.
e = energy in physics equations
Hanging is all about
force and gravity,
about tension and torque.
Lynching is hanging
with a capital ‘H’
for hate,
with the silent, sinister
addition of ‘e’
as in evil.
Injustice is a white man’s noose,
from the trees of California
to the New York island.
Our voices must chant, lifting
the fog of dark injustice—
no lives matter until black lives matter.
In this land made for you and me,
let justice truly stand
for the end of racism,
from the Redwood forest
to the Gulf stream waters, and beyond.
I feel great trepidation posting this poem.
It is not my intention to shame or accuse anyone
just because they are white.
This post is about how ashamed I feel.
Most of the time, I am perceived as white,
and my birth certificate indicates "Caucasian."
The truth is much more complicated,
but that’s a discussion for another time.
The irony is that this is a poem where
I state that my white privilege means
it’s time for me to shut up, listen,
and let black people speak and lead.
Yet, here I am posting my white woman poem.
I am trying to be the best ally I can.
I’ve found some resources to help me with this.
Here are a few:
https://www.greatbigstory.com/guides/how-to-become-a-better-black-lives-matter-ally
and
http://www.scn.org/friends/ally.html
and
https://reflections.yale.edu/article/future-race/becoming-trustworthy-white-allies
Lana Hechtman
Disappear This White Woman’s Ink,Burn This Poem
A white woman’s pen
means nothing.
Even when she means
to write as ally,
she betrays otherwise,
saying stupid shit
about a best friend
or a maid who helped raise her.
Too bad her ink isn’t white,
invisible as her skin
is to the police.
Let her ink leak,
sink a pool of black
onto the page
so that it no longer
reflects her privileged face.
When she stares
into the depths of inequality,
and says she cares, still,
all she sees is color.
Let the white woman’s thoughts
be unknown,
let her action show
her true feelings.
If she’s really an ally,
racism, injustice,
civil unrest will force her
to do her best,
attend the protests
holding signs inked with
a black person’s words
instead of her own.
Let her body be
one in a crowd,
where instead of proud,
she’s ashamed
of her skin,
the violence and sin
it has always represented
in America.
Let her return from the rally
and burn her diaries,
her poems,
all her writings.
Let her instead
be led by voices
of the disempowered,
with their history
of malicious slaughter
so red it’s black.
Let this white woman’s pen
no longer be a weapon,
intentional or inadvertent.
Let my pen become a window
cleared of my well-meaning ink,
so that I may look though
and see the truth
as it’s always been—
my voice is nothing
but more injustice,
more drops
in a pool of black blood
so dark, so wide,
so oft renewed,
it never dries.
Lana Hechtman Ayers
What a Wonderful World for Louis Armstrong
When Satchmo set down the trumpet
and let his gravelly voice become the music,
the earth nearly stopped spinning
in awe of such angelic praise.
It was a sweltering summer Sunday afternoon
in my house, Daddy lying on the couch
with the fat weekend paper, sat up
and set it aside when the song
filtered into the living room from the radio,
filling it with fluttering Monarch butterflies,
lilac blossoms heavy with scent,
red hibiscus blooms dripping dew
onto the rust shag rug, suddenly transformed
to a carpet of soft green grass my toes
couldn’t resist & a cool breeze rose up from
palms trees that shimmied in the corners.
My mother, who possessed no silly bone,
showed up in a hula skirt & matched
the swaying rhythms with her ample hips.
And soon, my brother joined in,
shaking a box of salt, & robins bobbed
heads from their perch on the coffee table,
& daddy whistled along, while our dog
rolled cartwheels & ice cream sundaes
floated down from the sky that once was
a ceiling, now only cloudless blue.
And when the song ended as songs do,
the room became a room again.
The breeze vanished, along with the trees
& birds & grass. The staleness of humid
air asserted itself again and my mother
complained about the too-bright sun
& my brother blamed me for something
I hadn’t done & my father didn’t look up
from the newspaper, ignoring the fuss.
Me, I closed my eyes & covered my ears.
I could still hear Satchmo’s voice rising
from the middle of my chest, a crooning
from inside my heart & his raspy, happy
praise song has lived there ever since.
Lana Hechtman Ayers
Random Assignment
What in nature could dwarf
unjust murders
by agents of human law?
Not the rain
that washes the streets
of pollen and petal fall
spilled blood
and the spittle
of a black man’s dying breath.
Not the sun
that pretends bright mood
and warmth penetrating
that soul of all who bathe in it—
full spectrum white light
composed of rainbow.
Not the breezes
that blow across continents
and great waters
across imaginary divides of greed—
breezes joining breath to breath
to breath
all equal in lightness.
Not the mountains
that kaleidoscope through
green, blue, grey, brown, black,
golden, pink in changing light—
each peak
all races.
Not the trees
that bless the air with
transformative life—
trees of every shape, size, description
drought tolerant
torrent tolerant
tolerant.
Not the ground itself
every shade of brown
millions of years of heat and upheaval
cooling and hardening
and softening in great rains—
gouged, relocated, steamrolled,
tread upon.
Not the clear not sky
its firefly stars
blinking from vast numbers
of eons ago
their code of creation embedded
in every creature’s DNA
on planet earth
every one
everyone.
And none of it
nothing of nature
dwarfs the violation
the violence
of one human against another
rooted in
random
assignment
of pigment.
Lana Hechtman Ayers
The Color of Racismfor Z.S.
Winters,
my nephew drives a snowplow
in a small Colorado town
as white as the snow
he drives into high
compressed banks.
His skin is the color
of hickory bark
with the cinnamon glow
of youth his brief
twenty-three years affords.
He’s shy but quick
to laugh, and when he does
he tilts his chin down,
looks up at you
with his umber pupils
from a doe-eyed angle.
When I think of him
so far away, commencing
his adult life in this
America,
my heart contracts
with ache.
Other seasons, he drives
the county pick-up,
weeds and snips
courthouse shrubbery
into symmetrical shapes.
Justice is not so
manicured.
My nephew’s skin
is the color of dew
in midnight moonlight,
a jewel on this earth
living so far from those
who love him.
My nephew is a member
of the brotherhood
of all men,
as we all are,
with our varying
degrees of melanin,
but the same number
of cytes to make
precious brown pigment.
& Some of us excel
in pigment, my nephew’s
skin rich, beautiful,
mine less so.
Maybe you stood in line
behind my nephew
at Walmart,
you just buying a gallon
of milk, his skin
the color of polite,
said, go on ahead of me.
My nephew loves
video games
and pizza and burritos.
Perhaps you know
a young man like him,
or are the mother of
someone much like him,
or grandfather of, or teacher.
Maybe my nephew has plowed
your roadway,
or someone like him has,
so the streets are safe
for you to pass.
Maybe he mowed the grass
in your neighborhood park
so you could lie out
on sunny spring & summer days
with your picnic and book,
or play frisbee with friends,
or toss a ball to your dog.
My nephew loves dogs.
If he’s been working hard,
his skin glints
as if lacquered with gold
and if you’re lucky enough
to behold it, my nephew’s
contagious smile
will lighten your burdens
for a while,
despite his dark skin.
So when you ask me why
I’m outraged
ask yourself why
to white policemen
&
to white supremacists
&
to whites who say they
don’t see color,
my nephew’s skin
is the color of fear,
the color of hatred,
the color of oppression,
the color of lynching
in broad, bright daylight.
Cosmogony
Eavesdropping on night sky,
I listen to the stars
whisper lines of verse
to one another
across lightyears
in the electromagnetic
language of god—
each of the trillions of galaxies
intoning a celestial renga
of chaos and creation.
We humans, a mere
comma in the endless poem.
Lessons from Lockdown
None of us can truly know
the heart of the innocent man
waiting on death row,
though living in this pandemic
makes us feel closer to
believing we fathom some
great injustice.
That death is the only promise
life ever made, is made
more visible now
by this invisible virus
soaring in and out on breath.
Taking stock, taking inventory
however you say it
(and not just of consumables
like toilet paper and beans)
arrives eventually,
for all of us,
days or weeks into lockdown.
Whether we’ve been furloughed
(or just plain let go)
from our jobs,
or have taken to working from home,
we come to that urgent
question honestly—
what matters most in this moment?
Contemplating impermanence,
cherished clichés come first—
love and family and peace.
Shelter, and safety and sustenance.
Friends and all our faculties—
sight and breath and movement
most of all,
while touch evades
those of us fully alone.
Home is the sky
that is always beautiful,
and the tree that leans a little,
the chickadees coming
to the feeder outside
the kitchen window.
The low moon swooning
and disappearing into the night.
Heightened awareness
of sweetness.
Beloved voices arriving
on the various devices.
Giving and grace
become commonplace—
singing, composing,
planting herbs,
dancing at the curb,
dropping off goodies
for the elderly couple
up the street.
We can keep this all going,
the simple goodnesses,
the heightened senses,
even without threat of virus,
without sacrifice.
All that is necessary—
a shift in attitude from
being among the condemned—
to a gratitude for what is,
for the absurdity of uncertainty’s
boundless lessons and blessings.
A decade ago on this date, my brother died of a 9-11-related illness.
This poem is from a collection about my brother, called
The Dead Boy Sings in Heaven.
The title comes from all my memories having been altered by knowing
how young he'd die, so that even in my childhood memories,
I began thinking of my brother as the dead boy.
He's in my heart always, but especially now,
since he was a first responder.
The Dead Boy Cruises
for my older brother Alan
This may be the happiest
moment of my life.
I never get to tag along
with my brother at nighttime.
I’m in the backseat
of the dead boy’s
hilarious friend Vinnie’s
red AMC Pacer,
squeezed into the middle hump
by his friends
Richard (the smart one)
and Danny (the cute one).
My brother rides shotgun.
The windows rolled down,
the stars clear,
the radio throngs
“The Night Chicago Died”
all the way up
Rockaway Boulevard.
Everyone is quiet.
All there is
is the cruise,
and the breeze,
and song after song,
that make my heart beat
likes it’s in my throat.
As if to signal a turn,
the dead boy
extends his arm
out the open window.
My brother’s hand becomes
a sail.
Mother’s Day Gift in the Pandemic
As the young man comes closer
than three feet to hand me
a complementary
Mother's Day gift bag,
You may be killing me
is what I think but do not say,
feeling the heat of fury
rise in my throat.
I am trying to keep my mouth shut,
hold my breath,
my cotton mask no match for his youth
and eagerness to provide
cheerful customer service.
He has on a mask, but somehow
I can tell he's smiling—
happy eyes.
He’s high school age,
maybe a bit older,
wants to chat.
Says he's going to go
for lots of hikes.
Never has he appreciated the sun
so much since coronavirus,
all this being trapped indoors.
He seems so fervent and strong
and maybe will have
a whole life ahead of him.
I hope so.
Mine may be over soon
now that his breath has come
within the death radius.
He glows with health.
I have lived longer than
I ever believed I would,
an angsty teen thinking maybe
I'd make it to 21.
But the years passed with me
still breathing.
I see now even in the worst
of times—with my grandmother
dying, my violent husband
trying to kill me,
my father dying,
my separation, divorce,
my best friend dying,
my brother dying—
all of it was a gift
I had little idea how to unwrap,
how to make use of.
Now as each day is
a promise not made,
I cherish the sweetness
of this boy's optimism,
my little puff of anger gone.
I have never been a mother
to any but four-legged creatures.
Suddenly I have this lethal urge
to hug this young man—
Coronavirus be damned—
tell him he is wonderful
and loved and the world is
better for his presence in it.
I do neither.
I don't know him.
But I do wish him well
and thank him
for his heroism in this time.
I hope the world will be
the kind of mother
he needs most.
As for me,
today is as good a last day
on earth as any.
Though I'd rather rain
than this balmy sun.
I've had a mere five decades to
practice my humanity,
still very much a work in progress.
No one ever gets it completely right
my Buddhist coach assures me.
Last week she came close to
being in a fatal auto accident.
The sun was not so blameless then,
blinding her as she came
around a curve.
Who would have thought us
as fragile as we are
against light and breath?
Today I will pet my dogs
and cats and hug my husband.
Drink tea.
Eat a ginger cookie or two.
It will be enough. More than.
