Mantis 19 (Spring 2021)
2020: Protest
James Madigan
River of Rebellion
Occupying the street
we sit down on South State Street
across from the station house in Chinatown
our leaders three:
young and black
eighteen, nineteen and twenty-one
caution us about
what lay ahead
Those in power
do whatever necessary
to keep their power
They unleash police
and national guard
Remember Portland, there were also
US Marshals,
Federal Protective Service,
US Customs and Border Patrol,
Homeland Security Investigations
They hire private armies
They let loose fascist militias
They wear uniforms, they wear plain clothes,
some camouflage, some all black or blue,
names obscured, unmarked vehicles,
steel toed boots, helmets and hard plastic shields,
armed with batons, handcuffs, brass knuckles, tear gas,
pepper spray, concussion bombs, water cannons,
rubber bullets, plastic bullets, wooden bullets,
tasers and live ammunition in semiautomatic weapons
They do not say excuse me please
They do not pull the chair out so you may sit at the table
They do not make sure each slice of cake is of equal size
They attack us, punch us, beat us, raise the bridges to entrap us,
surround us, kettle us, push us down and kick us, snarl, growl,
curse us, terrorize us, gas us, arrest us
We march
into the center of the city
meet with other
streams of marchers
to create a mighty
river of rebellion
Let us prepare.
What do we have?
What are our strengths?
Look to the person next to you
Look them in the eye
and say:
I will be there with you
I will be there for you
I care about you
I support you
I love you
Sing the Songs, Say the Names
Steady beat of talking drums.
Listen as Janelle and Rio,
red paint slashed across their eyes,
say the names of Eric Garner,
Trayvon Martin, Freddie Gray,
Sandra Bland, Michael Brown,
Sharonda Singleton, George Floyd
And more. And more.
Hell You Tambout.
Years pass,
every week new names to say.
There was a time,
Freedom Summer of ’64,
the names to say were
James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner.
Goodman and Schwerner
Northern white activists
each shot once in the chest.
James Chaney, a local Black man,
savagely beaten, castrated, shot 3 times.
Dumped together
in the Mississippi mud wall of a retention dam.
Mississippi goddamn.
During the search for their bodies,
the corpses of college students
Henry Hezekiah Dee and
Charles Eddie Moore
were found, and that of fourteen year old
Herbert Oarsby.
And the bodies of five other
Black people
never identified,
never named.
There is a photo from Marion, Indiana
August 7, 1930
that haunted Abel Meerepol,
haunted him so he wrote a poem
that became a song.
Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith
lynched
before thousands of smiling white faces
dressed as for a Sunday community picnic,
posing for the camera,
then buying postcards of
the photographic evidence.
Strange Fruit.
Poets and songwriters
bear witness to injustice
and remember the names.
Sing the songs,
say the names.
JAMES MADIGAN is an emerging poet, currently enrolled in the Masters of Creative Writing - Poetry program at University of Illinois at Chicago. He is a father of three daughters. His work has been accepted or published in Angry Manifesto, Owen Wister Review, Capsule Stories, and Oddball Magazine. He lives in Oak Park, Illinois.