Red Letter Poem #148

 The Red Letters

 

 

In ancient Rome, feast days were indicated on the calendar by red letters.  To my mind, all poetry and art serves as a reminder that every day we wake together beneath the sun is a red-letter day.

 

                                                                                                          – Steven Ratiner

 

 

 

 

Red Letter Poem #148

 

 

 

 

It used to strike me as something of a weak gesture: designating February as Black History Month.  As if knowledge should be so circumscribed.  As if maintaining our understanding of history – without gaps and omissions – was anything less than every citizen’s responsibility, all year long.  Doesn’t it go without say that this an integral component of those crucial truths our founding fathers and mothers declared as self-evident?   Do we need to declare out loud: how good the sun above us; or how glad to be breathing – just to get out of bed in the morning?  But now that a number of our once-united States have begun making forgetfulness tantamount to official policy – and the study of Black History a suppressed activity in their schools, if not outlawed altogether – I have come to appreciate that sometimes we all benefit from even the most obvious reminder.  So February brings with it the imperative: learn, remember, share the story of our people’s journey.  All of our peoples.

 

I felt grateful to receive poems recently from a new Red Letter contributor, Dr. Lauren Fields.  She is a second-year resident in the MGH/McLean Psychiatry program here in Boston – but it’s clear she is at the start of two impressive careers.  Poetry, for Lauren, has not been a separate pursuit, but rather an essential practice throughout her medical training, deepening her understanding of self and others.  She reports, as well, that writing poetry has been “a means of grappling with, exploring, and celebrating what it means to be an African-American woman living in the United States.”  Her poems have already begun appearing in literary magazines such as Blackberry: a Magazine, Linden Avenue Literary Journal, WATER Literary and Arts Magazine, as well as the anthologies A Garden of Black Joy: Global Poetry from the Edges of Liberation and Living and Corona: An Anthology of Poems.  She was one of the prize-winners in the 2020 International FPM-Hippocrates Health Professional Poetry Award.

 

In “3 Days”, the speaker brings to mind the story of Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old Black woman from Naperville, Illinois who was relocating to Texas for a new job.  Stopped for a traffic violation outside Prairie View by a State Trooper, she somehow ended up under arrest where, three days later, she was found hanging in her cell.  2015.  That was not supposed to be the final year in that young woman’s narrative.  Lauren’s poem does not so much as bemoan that fate as it foresees that some similar terror could be her own end, or that of her family and friends.  As a white person, my privilege has been that I did not have to grow up embracing such knowledge.  But history has taught me otherwise; and Lauren’s poem underscores the failure of a country that permits injustice to continue unopposed.

 

And so I found myself today trying to bring to mind as many names, as many fragments of recent history as I can remember: Trayvon, Eric, Tyree, Michael, Tanisha, Tamir, Freddie, Sandra, Alton, Philando, Stephon, Antwon, Botham, Elijah, Breonna, Michael, George, Rayshard, Daunte – and that is only a fragment of the recounting.  Now we’ve added Tyre‘s name to that terrible roster.    Historians help us to understand that the tragic situation of these individuals is not separate from the long historical narrative of our country.  But poets declare – especially because others cannot: how good the sun; how glad to breathe.  Safeguarding history, deepening memory, honoring the truth by facing the whole story and not just the parts that make us feel good: these are simple but necessary tasks if our centuries-long pursuit of happiness is to endure.    

 

 

 

3 Days

 

for Sandra Bland 

 

 

This man-made monster, 

jaws cell-door wide, will swallow 

me, too. Will paint me 

orange, strip-search dignity 

out of my spine. Will fold me  

 

until I fit in  

their story about black rage. 

When they come to you 

and try to explain these graves 

in terms of death penalties 

 

for petty crimes or  

being alive, run. Run, find 

my story buried 

beneath the cell block benches,  

untold. Unfold me. Find me out. 

 

 

      ––Lauren Fields

 

 

 

The Red Letters 3.0

 

* If you would like to receive these poems every Friday in your own in-box – or would like to write in with comments or submissions – send correspondence to:

steven.arlingtonlaureate@gmail.com

 

 

* To learn more about the origins of the Red Letter Project, check out an essay I wrote for Arrowsmith Magazine:

https://www.arrowsmithpress.com/community-of-voices

 

and the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

http://dougholder.blogspot.com

 

* For updates and announcements about Red Letter projects and poetry readings, please follow me on Twitter          

@StevenRatiner