ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Lori Lasseter Hamilton is a breast cancer survivor and a rape survivor. She has written three poetry chapbooks: live, from the emergency room (New Dawn Unlimited, 2008), sawdust, soap, soil, & stars (Penhall Publishing, 2015), and body parts (New Dawn Unlimited, 2018). She earned a bachelor of arts in journalism from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1998, with a minor in English. She worked as a freelance writer for Birmingham Weekly from 2011 to 2012. She was a member of the Montevallo Poetry Slam team in 2003 and 2013, competing in regional and national poetry slams. Lori is a member of Birmingham, Alabama’s Sister City Spoken Word Collective, and she volunteers to lead Wordsmiths, a poetry writing workshop, at Birmingham Public Library. She has been married to Robert Hamilton for 14 years.
Also by Lori Lasseter Hamilton:
live, from the emergency room
sawdust, soap, soil, & stars
dance, skeleton, dance
Dance, skeleton!
Dance down that playing field
and sing a silly song
as you dance your touchdown victory dance:
“the leg bone’s connected to the knee bone,
the knee bone’s connected to the thigh bone.”
The bone of Jalen’s knee got hurt in an ACL injury,
the anterior cruciate ligament crushed on the football field,
the only level playing field for young African American men on our TV screens.
Or is it? When the ACLU must make a visit to the Astro turf,
when the ACLU must intercept a touchdown,
Kaepernick’s knee touching down to the ground,
there’s a problem in this country
when the woman who sewed the first American flag
has a name that rhymes with Betsy DeVos:
Betsy Ross, who sewed the red white and blue, the star-spangled banner,
the bonnie blue flag, the grand old flag
the high-flying flag we unfurl at every NFL game.
Do you really believe this is what Betsy Ross became a seamstress for?
for a lie? like when we sing the line
“what so proudly we hailed”, an image of our flag waving in the sky.
Do you think this is what Francis Scott Key meant,
to proudly hail a flag waving in the air for our country’s education department
led by a Betsy stripping away Title 9 protections,
a Betsy who wants to
“balance the rights of the accused with the need to crack down” on sexual assault
across all-American college campuses?
Do you believe a student’s safety stripped away by a Betsy
is ultra-patriotic?
This Betsy who heads the Department of Education
making it harder for 50 percent of the American population
to get an education
‘cause instead of taking their final exam,
they’ve gotta worry about taking their final breath.
What will happen to them if they report their rapist?
Will they be believed
or will they be criminalized like Megan Rondini,
who ended up strapping her neck in a self-made noose
after going out on a limb
like a tree limb used to lynch black men
who dare defend their rights,
who take a knee
not to protest war veterans
but police brutality.
I wonder if a flag was draped behind the podium
as Betsy DeVos announced she was rolling back Obama-era protections.
The red white and blue sparkles like stars under stage lights.
A Skittles pack is red
like the blood Trayvon Martin shed,
unarmed, walking back from a 7-11,
his blood streaming into the lake of the Retreat at Twin Lakes.
Kaepernick takes a knee
for the red shed at the hands of the blue,
red from unarmed hands
carrying cash their mama gave them for sweet tea and Skittles,
hands too full to carry a gun.
To those who say Kaepernick
should stand and not take a knee,
how else will black men get our attention on TV,
crouching down on a knee
not to kick the pigskin in a huddle at the 50-yard line,
but to kneel in protest of police brutality?
Did Betsy really sew the old red white and blue
for a young man carrying candy, not guns, in his hand
to get shot?
Did Betsy thread red white and blue together into cloth
only for fewer American college women to report rape
just because a few reports may be false?
A few false flags #8230;
what other flags are false?
the Confederate flag …
because according to this country’s Declaration of Independence,
“all men are created equal
and have unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
So you still think Colin should stand
when so many unarmed black men are being stuffed into body bags?
Ask yourself if a man who’s seen red blood pool
should stand for a piece of cloth
with his unarmed hand over his heart,
like a badge worn over the heart by a man dressed in blue,
a blue stripe as one of the rainbow colors
emblazoned on a pack of red Skittles.
Ask yourself if a Megan on a college campus
should wrap herself in the flag waved by a Betsy
who has stripped her of her Title 9 protections.
Ask yourself why the Megans
who get stalked like trophy animals by the T.J. Bunns
should stand during the star-spangled banner
if they don’t feel safe enough in America to report that they were raped?
This piece of cloth binding and gagging them, silencing them like duct tape.
Ask yourself if the veterans who shed blood, became amputees at the knee,
the Army Navy Air Force Marines,
didn’t fight for black men, black women, and white women
but only for white men?
Did they really shed their blood on the battlefield of war
for your fellow American woman to be called a liar and a whore?
Did a Vietnam vet, now in a wheel chair,
really go “over there”
for a teenage American boy
to be shot down for carrying a pack of Skittles,
bought with the money his mama gave him,
home from the store?
You say Kaepernick shouldn’t take a knee.
You say he should be fired if he’s not standing.
You say he should be kicked out of the NFL like a football.
So you’re saying he should be OK with police brutality
when, if it wasn’t for his NFL stature and salary,
he might be shot down in the street?
Ask yourself how many more star players there will be
to kick around your pigskin
if the police keep killing unarmed black men.
Black teenage boys in high school
are walking home right now from the 7-11 with candy,
held tightly in hands that will one day throw a ball made of pigskin
to bring the Crimson Tide to victory,
crimson
like the blood of Megan Rondini,
like the blood of Trayvon Martin,
like the blood of Michael Brown.
Let me ask you,
would you have been OK if, back in the 1980s,
the police had shot Bo Jackson down?
You say Colin’s OK so long as he bends a knee to kick the pigskin
and you get down on your knees to earnestly pray when he has an injury
across all-American college campuses?
Do you believe a student’s safety stripped away by a Betsy
is ultra-patriotic?
This Betsy who heads the Department of Education
making it harder for 50 percent of the American population
to get an education
‘cause instead of taking their final exam,
they’ve gotta worry about taking their final breath.
What will happen to them if they report their rapist?
Will they be believed
or will they be criminalized like Megan Rondini,
who ended up strapping her neck in a self-made noose
after going out on a limb
like a tree limb used to lynch black men
who dare defend their rights,
who take a kne
not to protest war veterans
but police brutality.
I wonder if a flag was draped behind the podium
as Betsy DeVos announced she was rolling back Obama-era protections.
The red white and blue sparkles like stars under stage lights.
A Skittles pack is red
like the blood Trayvon Martin shed,
unarmed, walking back from a 7-11,
his blood streaming into the lake of the Retreat at Twin Lakes.
Kaepernick takes a knee
for the red shed at the hands of the blue,
red from unarmed hands
carrying cash their mama gave them for sweet tea and Skittles,
hands too full to carry a gun.
To those who say Kaepernick
should stand and not take a knee,
how else will black men get our attention on TV,
crouching down on a knee
not to kick the pigskin in a huddle at the 50-yard line,
but to kneel in protest of police brutality?
Did Betsy really sew the old red white and blue
for a young man carrying candy, not guns, in his hand
to get shot?
Did Betsy thread red white and blue together into cloth
only for fewer American college women to report rape
just because a few reports may be false?
A few false flags #8230;
what other flags are false?
the Confederate flag …
because according to this country’s Declaration of Independence,
“all men are created equal
and have unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
So you still think Colin should stand
when so many unarmed black men are being stuffed into body bags?
Ask yourself if a man who’s seen red blood pool
should stand for a piece of cloth
with his unarmed hand over his heart,
like a badge worn over the heart by a man dressed in blue,
a blue stripe as one of the rainbow colors
emblazoned on a pack of red Skittles.
Ask yourself if a Megan on a college campus
should wrap herself in the flag waved by a Betsy
who has stripped her of her Title 9 protections.
Ask yourself why the Megans
who get stalked like trophy animals by the T.J. Bunns
should stand during the star-spangled banner
if they don’t feel safe enough in America to report that they were raped?
This piece of cloth binding and gagging them, silencing them like duct tape.
Ask yourself if the veterans who shed blood, became amputees at the knee,
the Army Navy Air Force Marines,
didn’t fight for black men, black women, and white women
but only for white men?
Did they really shed their blood on the battlefield of war
for your fellow American woman to be called a liar and a whore?
Did a Vietnam vet, now in a wheel chair,
really go “over there”
for a teenage American boy
to be shot down for carrying a pack of Skittles,
bought with the money his mama gave him,
home from the store?
You say Kaepernick shouldn’t take a knee.
You say he should be fired if he’s not standing.
You say he should be kicked out of the NFL like a football.
So you’re saying he should be OK with police brutality
when, if it wasn’t for his NFL stature and salary,
he might be shot down in the street?
Ask yourself how many more star players there will be
to kick around your pigskin
if the police keep killing unarmed black men.
Black teenage boys in high school
are walking home right now from the 7-11 with candy,
held tightly in hands that will one day throw a ball made of pigskin
to bring the Crimson Tide to victory,
crimson
like the blood of Megan Rondini,
like the blood of Trayvon Martin,
like the blood of Michael Brown.
Let me ask you,
would you have been OK if, back in the 1980s,
the police had shot Bo Jackson down?
You say Colin’s OK so long as he bends a knee to kick the pigskin
and you get down on your knees to earnestly pray when he has an injury
but do you say he’s unpatriotic and oughta be fired
and you no longer wanna be Colin’s friend
because his knees during the national anthem
don’t stand but bend?
Ask yourself
who’s the real patriot, then?
Dance, skeleton, dance!
Dance down that playing field,
and don’t you dare kneel!
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
