Crowd at a Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party meeting in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, July 1964, Herbert Randall Freedom Summer Photographs, USM
“Poetry is always dissident.”
—Octavio Paz
It was muted Miles when we
Woke Saturday mornings.
When we rose from slumber
to scents of sausage, potatoes,
bacon, eggs and coffee …
It was muted Miles when we
Woke to fragrances wafting
from Sunbeam waffle iron.
Maybe manicures and pedicures, post-
breakfast? Maybe, on his way to
Work, the barber would pick us up for
close-cropped hair and nourishing adult
ear worms?
Maybe I’d be pitching? Brother
Steve catching—or gobbling
up ground balls at second base?
My Mother could organize all that!
Then rip apron off, gavel meetings
to order. Pull together picket lines;
Run California assembly and senate
campaigns—Or, settle long, long-
simmering disputes. She came equipped.
No cape. No “S” on her chest. No
unusual way of getting around. She
was just Mom …
Crazy Mom. Invited me to attend
a meeting with her. My response:
“I don’t wanna go to your political meetings—
I just wanna play Little League Baseball!”
Her muted Miles reply… “Baby, everything’s
Political… How do you think your park got
there? How do you think your coach got hired?
Everything’s political, baby.”
© 2023. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.
Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet; BAR's Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC. You can Vote for his work at GoFundMe and PayPal.
Efia Nwangaza is a South Carolina based attorney.
Elias Amare is a journalist and editor at Horn of Africa TV.
Krys Cerisier is an organizer with Vocal-NY’s Homeless Union.
Indictments, disruptions, arrests, defamation, incarceration and even assassination are the weapons used to discredit Black people who act in opposition to the system and who call for liberation…
Claudia Jones reminds us of the progressive potential of the failed West Indies Federation. But her analysis unwittingly anticipated the rise of its bourgeois descendant, CARICOM.
