Sunday, April 12, 2015

A Room of My Own: Gunshot Haiku

There are literally two Americas. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

a flurry of white ...
a black man shot in the back
as he runs


Note: This haiku was written in response to the killing of  Walter L. Scott by a white police officer, and "There are literally two Americas," a joshi ("prefatory note" functioning as a poetic device), is taken from Dr. King's speech  made at Stanford University in 1967, a year before his assassination.

Below are my published tanka about the killings of innocent African Americans by white policemen:

a baseball cap
on his gold-and-black coffin...
a silent cry
from the bloodstained ground
no justice, no peace
(for Michael Brown)

PoemHunter, August 26 2014

blindfolded Justice
holding her scales and sword
in the square
row upon row of black men
chanting I can't breathe
(for Eric Garner)

PoemHunter, December 6, 2014

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