He’s, obviously, not a New Yorker,
riding trains 4 and 5 in the morning.
Trains packed with hoodie-crowned;
shuttered chocolate, mocha, peanut
butter, caramel, coffee-colored faces—
Lunch bucket UN—palpable power,
Grabbing their last Zs, before Shifts
Holding levers, running the city.
He, obviously, gets no coffee,
street snacks, scarves, gloves,
posters, CDs, DVDs, caps, T-shirts
from carts and stands tourists treasure;
Carts and stands powered by African, Asian,
Latin American, Caribbean, Middle Eastern labor…
Lord knows he’s never been
to bodegas named Ameer's,
or Branson’s juice bar,
or the Texas Star,
Tarboosh, Nanoosh,
Cafe One, Clove, Dig Inn,
or Peace Food—where
Workers from plundered countries
Toil—countries Boss Tweet dissed!
Eateries where workers break bread,
rub shoulders, swap stories: U.S. bases,
Blood-soaked “boots on the ground,” Coups,
Death squads, decomposing bodies, bullets,
Bombs, missiles chasing families from
smoldering homelands…“in harm’s way”
Tweet’s just a paper towel-tossing,
beetle-brained, feces-faced
Clown, giving cover to 1%
Pickpockets working the crowd—
Look for him in the sewer…
Days when all trains empty at
City Hall and Wall Street…
Raymond Nat Turner © 2018 All Rights Reserved
Our poet in residence, Raymond Nat Turner is an acclaimed poet and performing artist. You can find much more of his work at http://upsurgejazz.com.
C.C. Campbell Rock is a New Orleans-based journalist. She recently wrote Louisiana v Callais: They Stole Black Power Again" for the site Black Source Media. She discusses the recent Supreme Court…
On April 25th, the West African nation Mali experienced a coordinated attack carried out by Western-backed proxy forces seeking to undermine the Alliance of Sahel States confederation. Abayomi…
From the 1870 15th Amendment to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, voting rights for Black people have proven to be ephemeral. Laws can be unenforced or gutted altogether. Black people’s rights must be…
“I felt proud to be black in a country in revolution with a leader of Iberian ancestry who had launched Operation Carlota, in one of the hardest terrains on the African continent…”
Reuters reports on a mysterious government document seeming to confirm that sanctions will be lifted on Eritrea.
