LAW
For the clatter of broken bullets
four hours on the pavement
spent on unimportant
brokenbullets
body for four
Darren Wilson the cop
hoursinthesun
would have picked up
McCullough the DA
black
no charges
six
Nixon the Governor
garbage
“Hands up
brokenbullets
un armed
broken
sooner
don’t shoot!”
riddledbody flat
deadteen
facing cop
far off
inthesun
don’t
bro ken
The Colorado Independent‘s News-Stained Poetry Project features poems that are about the news, products of the news, responses to the news. “News stained” is meant as a badge of honor, a reference to the long tradition of the poet as witness. As Carolyn Forché wrote, politics can sometimes be seen as a “contaminant to serious literary work,” something to be avoided. But that way of thinking, she said, “gives the political realm too much and too little scope… It renders the personal too important and not important enough.” News developments, whether or not they are reported, shape our personal lives every day. We don’t often think in the moment about how that is happening and what it means. We should think more about it. Poets think about it. And we want to help encourage them to write more about it.
Please send submissions to tips@www.coloradoindependent.com, subject line “poem,” with a short bio and some mention of where and when the poem was written.
[A man in Denver stands before a line of cops preventing protestors from blocking I-25 after the Ferguson Grand Jury decision. Image via DAM Collective.]
