freedomartspress
freedomartspress
Freedom Arts Press
24 posts
we are a NYC collective that publishes global and local writers with radical visions. what we eventually produce, reproduce, and distribute, will all be free. local community members who want to participate do not need credentials, or a diploma, or privilege. all the materials are crowd sourced, fundraised, or stolen. this press is emblematic of the Freedom Art Movement's goal for a solidarity economy. we use this press to imagine and actualize creativity outside of markets and profit. creation for creations sake or for the sake of community. anti-commodity.
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freedomartspress · 5 years ago
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Grappler — Samuel Clementine
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Small, fat fingers, wrapped around the gnarled limbs of a crab apple tree turn red then white when you hang from them. The weight of my small body being held up, just barely, by the tree and I felt myself bounce slightly in the hot Missouri air. I was sweating hard even then, but after days of climbing the small tree, my eyes would adjust to the sting of perspiration and my fingers learn to go numb before the pain of the rough bark forces me to release. I’ve known that feeling before in one way or another ever since. I would lose my grip and fall, feet first, into the grass below, my body twisted in fear or limp in exhaustion, but I would try to climb it all day. Even on days that I would make it to the top I would try again. The crab apple tree was nothing to fear or hate, but an opponent. My mother saw me some days, when she was up, and would watch from the screen door of the trailer as I’d try to climb that little tree. She’d watch me and from time to time the muscles in her arm would jump to grip the handle of the door the way my forearm would jump to grab the crabapple tree. She’d wince as if the bark on the handle would stick her and she’d turn away with that same pained look in her eyes. Three weeks after my fifth Thanksgiving on this earth, she turned away crying.
When I was finally able to climb the tree five times in a row without stopping, my mother informed me that my sister and I would be living with our father for the foreseeable future. I was either never told why or the years have taken it from me. Two days later I lived with my father in a halfway house in Springfield, Illinois. The trailer I lived with my mother and sister at the time gave me direct access to the tree, but now I had no friends and no opponents. Just long, cold walks with my father and groups of kids I didn’t know that seemed to be a constantly rotating cast of people that would be there one day and gone the next. I was never privy to the things that put my father in prison, but years later my mother would only tell me, “Your dad likes to fight.” When he couldn't pay rent he would refuse to leave wherever it was he was living and he would be removed by the cops. He was abusive and bad tempered and often cruel. When I lived with him he kept his nose clean and tried to teach me about God. I didn’t particularly like the pastor nor did I like the songs, but I remember feeling that I owed somebody something the whole time I was there.
We’d walk, sometimes for hours, from friend’s houses to soup kitchens to shelters to the halfway house. I was too large to be carried, but when it was late and bitterly cold he’d carry me as far as his arms could handle it. After some time the cold wind and the ache in my feet would numb just like my hands on the crabapple tree. The hostile cold would cut through my father and I like a knife and it took quick feet and tactics to make sure we didn’t freeze or starve. When my grandparents would send toys I would have to give the bulk away. My father never told me why he did this, but I can only guess it was to prepare me for the losses I can see coming. He didn’t want me to react to pressure, but to prepare my heart accordingly. About a year after I arrived in Springfield, my father left my sister and I with a woman named Mary he had met at a bus stop a week earlier. He said he’d be back the next day with a car, but two days passed. She, understandably, panicked and called the police and asked me if I knew anyone to call. I called the only number I knew, my grandmother, and the last thing I saw him doing was struggling with a cop to reach us as we were put into my grandparent’s car.
I would live for the rest of my childhood with my mother’s parents. They were in their mid fifties when they adopted my sister and I. We are the third generation in my family to have been raised by them, but the only black children they’ve ever raised. This began a losing battle in my home. My great-grandfather was a golden glove boxer when he was my age, but when he had children he put the gloves down and put his hands to raising a family. His offspring, five girls and one boy,  are the people who raised me for much of my adolescence. Each of them would, in earnest and sometimes subconsciously, show me how they dealt with the abuses they suffered as poor kids in a hard home. Uncle Jimmy wrestled and boxed and drank to numb himself. The sisters, my aunts, work themselves relentlessly because working meant not being home and money meant never having to come back. It was a family of tacticians and fighters, but we only ever fought each other.
I would wrestle, as my father did, and in it I found an outlet and an art. The control I gained over my body and my breathing made nights when I would go home to an imploding home seem easier to deal with. I could stay for a few hours after school and I would focus on defeating a single opponent. I had nowhere to be, but on the mat. My fat fingers would grip my opponents, turning red then white, as their weight would shift and I’d send them flying to the ground. I could grapple with a single opponent and it was never to hurt them, but to learn. We could teach each other about our strengths and weaknesses only by grappling with each other. I would only wrestle for one year, but these lessons would remain with me. Grappling is fighting someone while holding on to them. As grapplers, it is our duty to hold onto our opponents.
//
Samuel Clementine works as a UPS package handler and does theatre throughout the Midwest. 
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freedomartspress · 5 years ago
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deep ends — Walter Lucken IV
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I been in two deep ends if you allow I continue they aint the same, they are manifold one for everybody the other for everybody to dream of but everybody lose their body                                    yea, straight like that
door one opens to a grisly scene no shirt gold chain on phone feet dangling like there’s no bottom the male performs a dance to let the pack know he ain’t scared to die the black sun is out, whoever’s on the other end gets to talk to the girls in the pool i’m such an asshole why I gotta be all that tell us again what you came from how I can I describe the sound of one hand clapping
pool two a world where no matter whos kids im lookin out, powerful lungs I dive again bringing the children howling in wilderness back to the surface finding the bottom gives me leverage to push back out sucking air betwixt the hues tell us again what you came from a terrible time where people sold their life to a bank to dig a hole in the earth so they didn’t have to share the pool and then the pool was a way to show you had long money and lil poor boys who got beat and pushed in the mud dreamed and dreamed of clear pools black suns and gold chains and sweared they would never learn to be afraid to die            yea, straight like that
//
Walter Lucken IV teaches reading and writing in Detroit. He is easy to find if you need to get ahold of him.
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freedomartspress · 5 years ago
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Brother 1, 2, and 3 — Lauren August Betts
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The poetry chapbook, “Brother and Other Things”, that these three poems are apart of are available for free/donation directly to Lauren, here. 
Brother 1
When I was thirteen I spent a month with my auntie
that was in the summer
now I’m wondering how my insides work
how my fingernails can be so short
why stores keep making shoes too small for my feet
even in Connecticut
even in California
my brother moved out here and then he moved back
he had bigger plans than to stay away from home
and hope that somewhere else would claim him
just because he had arrived there
he has dreams about art school
I have dreams about sunken eyes and broken fingers
and begging people who are too deep asleep to listen
I didn’t realize I was doing it
But I spent a lot of time pretending not to know anything
and I don’t wake up all the way every day
My brother keeps breaking his ankle in the same place
I keep shaving the line of hair between my belly button and my hipline
Because I can’t untell myself that it’s ugly
I wonder if my brother and l will ever live in the same city
I spend a lot of time hoping he’s proud of me
it’s not every day that you can’t stop noticing
the frame of dirt around a fingernail
The changes in temperature
it’s not every day that you can catch the you that causes problems
and sit them down
and ask them to stay there until you can clean up your bedroom
and make calls to the people collecting your money
to ask them to wait a little longer
and write down the date correctly
there’s something too pretty for words about taking your time.
Brother 2
While I’ve got you here –
My fingernails are changing colors.
Orange is what they’re becoming, It’s not coming off.
I’d guess a deficiency in some major vitamin
But I’ve been taking that tincture she gave me
I do not know if my fingernails are strong.
Never let ‘em get long enough.
While I’ve got you here –
My brother is coughing up corn
Corn is sweet
My brother is coughing up dirt
Comes here for a week and goes to slaughter a lamb for a party
The lamb is stealing the sow’s food from the next pen over
The lamb lost its neck wool from rubbing up against the gate
to eat the pig’s corn and melons
The things you notice.
I’m doing so much out of order
I’ve been feeding that lamb but not enough
And that lamb tells me a story
The story is this: “You are repulsed by suffering”
That is what I walk with
That is what I put safely in my pocket
And still somehow manage to lose, somewhere on the farm.
Somewhere on the farm I pick a peach and its
Never sweet so while I’ve got you here I just wanted to ask:
Where in the world are all the good peaches?
I have a fear of losing my books
Of losing my time in the morning
My brother’s coughing up beans and rice
My brother’s coughing up chalupas
They were always his favorite and I never liked them
He asks for them now when he’s twenty and I am twenty four
and I want to tell him
“No, I don’t want chalupas. I hate them and I’ve always hated them.”
But I don’t.
I avoid it
When I begin to make tortillas de harina
And he asks what I’m doing I tell him I thought he said “tacos”
And he doesn’t argue with me.
He is so helpful
He is always patting my head
Brother 3
I started seeing lady bugs in late February
On the 28th I sowed chili seeds and yarrow
to plant in someone else’s garden
invest in someone else’s future
the days are becoming long
or at least it's warmer than it was a month ago
I was thinking you might be able to figure out if you love someone
by looking at their picture quicker than any other way
it’s a myth that frogs sing only at night
And that the seeds of a pepper are the spicy part
I forget who told me
I’m putting myself where someone else can see me
someone good beyond good
warm beyond warm
kind beyond kind
hiding in the tall grass
killing time
I didn’t dance this morning or yesterday
but I did do my laundry
it always gets dark before I’m ready
and I miss my brother
I always miss him but today I miss him in the sun while the frogs sing
I know that he’s in the cold
one year older
somewhere new
and for some reason I don’t understand
I can’t call him and check in
That would make things worse
he’s always falling in love
and drawing pictures of my life
the cows on the hill
the sheep we slaughtered together, hanging
the barn
and it’s always more beautiful when he is showing it
I asked him to draw me a home
but I know it’s a lot to ask for so I told him no pressure
that whenever he gets around to it is good for me
he has better music than I do
he loves the piano
is red green color blind
it might be that he has a little piece of someone else in him
someone we thought we lost two years before he was born
the ocean knows how good it is
and he knows how good he is
I can tell
I feel like this day might kill me by being bright and going on forever
these birds might kill me with their singing
I’ll call him later
I’ll call him tomorrow
I’ll call him when I’m ready
and even a whole entire day isn’t plenty
but let’s practice saying it anyway
“It’s plenty”
“you’re plenty”
“I’ve got plenty, thank you”
bet you didn’t know you can make pasta out of potatoes just by smiling warm and
opening wide your mouth
bet you didn’t know that hot as hell can be good for your bones
sometimes even the people I love to the moon
don’t put things back where they belong
and break things that are special to me
I keep hearing the word graze
the sounds keep making me jump
I always add 1 to a number to make sense of it
and it really does help
but sometimes even when I spend a day doing exactly what I want
I fall down on the ground at the end of it
I just need a breath and for everything to be quiet for a minute
anyway, something lucky:
my friends are asleep on the couch in the den and outside on the porch
and I still feel them with me almost all the way.
//
Lauren August Betts is very cool, worked on a farm once, and definitely has a brother. You can find out more about her on Instagram @laurenaugustbetts and/or via the interview on the IGTV section of @freedomartspress​ on Instagram.
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freedomartspress · 5 years ago
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LA Tenants Union May Day Motorcade speech — Bee Coleman
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Delivered 5/1/2020 at LA Tenants Union May Day Motorcade against capitalism and police violence
“What’s good people? I’m Bee, my pronouns are they/she/he, I’ve lived in South LA for the last 4 years and in Los Angeles since 2010. Today is a holy day for activists and it’s lit and makes perfect sense that workers and tenants would come together today, since we are often one in the same, to make damn sure that WE are seen and heard and CARED for - not bailed out or sent back to work without protections and proper pay or way before it’s actually SAFE!
I’m here today representing the Altar Haus, a collective of 6 black and latinx queer and trans folks in South Central. Every one of us has had our income impacted, if not completely erased, and we can not pay rent, so we won’t pay - and we did not in April and we will not until our work returns when it is SAFE - so we are rent striking. We don’t believe landlords or corporations deserve to make income from people who can’t, especially during a global health crisis. We do believe Housing is a basic need and a human right, so really landlords and banks should never make a profit from exploiting people’s needs in the first fucking place. That is the curse of capitalism and that is why we must divest from that shit and support regenerative economics, invest in farming, housing and worker cooperatives so workers and tenants can own the means to meet our own needs. So we can build strong, trusting relationships and communities who connect and support each other, towards a world where we don’t need or want the police because we practice transformative justice, not criminal justice, and we have everything we need. This is a world we’re starting to see with mutual aid networks popping up and tenants and worker unions sprouting up everywhere and we can push this momentum.
Today we have a chance to make demands! To let it be known, the poor and working class, who are largely black and brown, will not martyr ourselves for this economy, our ancestors already did that! Tenants across the country today stand in solidarity with workers striking from Instacart, Walmart, Whole Foods, Amazon, Target, and more! We demand rents and mortgages canceled TODAY! We demand healthcare for all! We demand housing for all! We demand all prisoners and ice detainees freed! We demand debt relief from bills and utilities so we can stay safely home and let these billion dollar profit corporations pay to save this economy, NOT US! Y’all lil President trying to make a buck off a malaria drug made by a French company he invested in and telling doctors they didn’t have to treat trans people; local governments rushing to send people out to make and spend money so they won’t have to keep funding people’s ability to live; forcing meat processing plants to stay open when the virus is spreading among their workers; demanding the post office increase their rates or lose funding; ongoing ice raids and police still protecting and serving property owners and the state, terrorizing and murdering our neighbors without recourse; continued real estate speculation and construction on these stadiums and developments steady decimating low income communities, while we’re supposed to stay at home, but we can’t work and still none of these politicians have canceled rent or mortgages, all this shows you what’s up - these “leaders” all got their priorities fucked up! And people in black and brown communities been knowing these mutha fuckas never loved us, they’re trying to kill us! We know by now COVID is killing more black and brown people than any other group: because, thanks to white supremacy, we’re the most likely to have underlying health conditions, created by our environments, insert food deserts + environmental racism; from being more likely to work in low paying service jobs where we interact with high volumes of people; which we get thanks to shitty education in our neighborhoods, funded based on property taxes, do you see where i’m going with this? Basically all COVID did was highlight and exploit these social determinants of health, by making everyone vulnerable and making it impossible to ignore the most impacted.   So, with the sun moving into Taurus, it is time that we see this moment for what it is and get clear, grounded and bullish about what we will and won’t accept from a government, a society, an economy that are supposed to serve and sustain the people. What’s happening now is what you get when corporations buy your government and profit is prioritized over everything, including people’s lives and well-being, let alone nonhuman life on earth and the well-being planet itself. People are dying now, but people have been dying and so has this planet, so while this crisis is crazy tragic, it is disruptive and transformative for the necessary end to a way of living and being that couldn’t be sustained, it’s like the planet saving itself from us. So in a way I thank COVID for making the world stop and forcing us to remember that we are all connected, that we are all human, that what we do individually, impacts everyone collectively. So I want you to remember, if nothing else, that everything is energy - if you ask scientists and spiritualists they’ll say the same thing. So that means you are more than a worker or a tenant, you are energy and you have the ability to create a life that you see fit - THAT is what makes you valuable, not your labor and ability to make someone rich. So let’s collectively focus on canceling rent - We have a bill to cancel rent and mortgages in congress right now thanks to Ilhan Omar of Minn. So I encourage you to go to homesguarantee.org/cancelrent to demand our state representative support H.R 6515, which also creates financial relief for landlords’ lost income and a mechanism to help community land trusts buy properties that end up being sold. This would be a major win, and, like Assata said, it is our duty to fight for our freedom, it is our duty to win! We must love and protect one another. We have nothing to lose but our chains! Thank you for being here today! I know we will win!”
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[Above Top: Graphic from LA Tenants Union differentiating between housing vouchers/rent assistance/rent relief and cancel rent; below: graphic from the LA Tenants Union’s Rent Forgiveness Guide]
[Below: Photo from a Mother’s Day die-in at the mayor’s house]
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//
Follow Bee on Instagram @beetheeshiftshaper_ and the L.A. Tenants Union @latenants to keep up with some of the organizing being done on the West Coast.
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freedomartspress · 5 years ago
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Captivity the Preamble — Jordan Jace
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You go to jail 500,000 in debt. You are presumably held in a pretrial detention center. This is because you have no money. You have no money because you spent too much money on food. And on your three children. And on your mortgage. This is a lie because you made good money. You were an actor. The truth is a lie. You were probably not beaten in the detention center. I do not know this. I know the chorus will say in other times but not this time. Not that time. Not now. The chorus will watch the video of prisoners in Mississippi and say this is barbaric. If we believe in the pornographic we’ve probably gone too far. Imagine if you fucked your toys or your livestock. Imagine if you fucked cows in the field. In Ancient Greece its a myth and in the United States it’s a neo-slave narrative. There is no time but all the time. In the same place as my father at the same time as my father a prisoner was beaten. In a different location that is the same place a guard thought of abusing their power on a “perspective” women prisoner who was black. To collapse history I expand the poem. I make it longer. My fingers move. I’m tired and sore from typing on my phone. Always the notes section. Concision can be a tool like whiplash or the dizzy feeling of standing too quickly. I want to bloat the second until it explodes. This explosion is like the sky exploding. How does the limit explode. Let’s explore. There are no places in our history to explore. We must capture the captors and strangle them until they are dead. Reach down their throats and take the word discover, the word explore, then we can explore. Would this be an action, would we be agentive in this case, or would we be an echo of what was done to the us who is not us and was not us but still is us. I like talking in circles. I don’t mind circularity. I don’t mind the circularity of any argument. Circularity is an argument about oppression. The shit slaps. It fucking bangs. A language of joy to disarm a harm that can’t be disarmed or redressed. To cleave a tongue is all. Take the tongue, split it in two. We speak from the left side. You who are like me and speak from the left side. Your left is my left. We will always share a left. Not the white left. Not the leftovers. There is no direction. There is a heft to this weightlessness. It has no mass. It is hard to bear. Theoretically naked. More than half of everybody who’s everybody who’s lining the hospital beds in the covid units is black. I mean those who are dying. Mostly those who are dead. More than half of everybody who’s dying didn’t have a home to begin with and is now in a tent or in a prison as a punishment for the absence of possession in their lives. Laid like wicks in a warehouse. A bed of matches. They match. They mirror each other, they reflect, they pass on. I won’t theorize on what they pass between them. That is theirs and not mine. I paid the state taxes. They killed people with it and would’ve done so without it. I’ve had people die and missed the funeral. More pressing is I haven’t counted the number of people whose deaths touch my life, radiate from it, who are the transference of the heat of my body into smoke. What I give off to the air is someone else’s dying. I don’t have much else. The game of having nothing. What I have is to say. “This is Just to Say” is some fucking garbage. It’s trash. Let’s admit it. My father grew up in Paterson. Anticipate the circle. Complete it. It is completed. Look at me, the frontal lobe of the circle. The cortex of the circle. One of the notches of the spine of the circle. I am his and I am yours and he is ours so long as he is there. It is state sanctioned. The kisses he gave to my forehead were of forgiveness, of sanctity. Perhaps he forgave himself of his abuse unknowingly when he slept, with his dreams. We go to therapy in my dreams and have no mediator but the circle. I sleep. I step inside my mind. His image. We speak.
//
Jordan is from Los Angeles and is invested in abolition. He will begin his MFA at Brown in the Fall.
twitter: @thismf_spittin
instagram: overqualifiedsidepiece
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freedomartspress · 5 years ago
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Ms. Amerikkka — J. Nyla McNeill
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Ms. amerikkka. Ms.—Ms. amer—Ms. Please. Please, stop screaming at me.
Ms. amerikkka I do not know how to log onto my credit union app October 11, 2018.
I was trained as a scientist.
Ms. amerikkka, I was not born on stolen land just to argue with you.
Why don’t you go polish your shiny war machine?
I’m not into shit-talking, do not ask me.  
I’ve come to pay homage to Ginsberg, to Burroughs, to Baldwin, to LeMaster.
Ms. amerikkka, you tryna get your mind fucked?
When will you love yourself?
When will you heal from the mean things you have done?
When will you finally kiss the cheeks of your baby socialists?
Ms. amerikkka, why is McGraw-Hill writing all of your textbooks?
Ms. amerikkka, when will it be possible for my hood-bound family to go on vacation? We just tryna relax for once.
When can I walk up in a store and not get my neck all breathed up on?
Ms. amerikkka—Beyoncé just wants us to dance.
You have me jailbreaking my iPhone.
You have me wanting to go to church.
Girl—please—please, just hear me out for once.
D.L. Shultz is my amethyst and I’ve learned so much from them it’s crazy.
Are you really “crazy” or are you Western psychology’s victim?
I’m telling it like it is.
I am going to apply myself in words, that is, very heavily.
Ms. amerikkka, you’ve misspelled my name again.
Ms. amerikkka, a moth watched me at yoga for twenty whole minutes.
I haven’t been able to sit in front of our TV at fifty-five inches, every day is six hours of comedy news commentary from my partner’s father.
Ms. amerikkka, I miss the classroom radicals.
Ms. amerikkka, I’m a communist and my parents do not know.
I got loud that I’ve been saving.
I chill in my room near our largest window and watch the yellow blooms sway like nobody’s business.
When I go to the club I get free drinks from fellow twinks and dance with butch women.
I’m pretty sure I have this down. You?
You should have seen me reading the Workers Vanguard.
My obsession with Freud might have led to my autoeroticism.
I’ve never kept my eyes closed for prayer.
I am an empath with psychic sensibilities.
Ms. amerikkka I still haven’t forgiven you for my Aunt Maria’s death after she was killed for rice in the Philippines.
Yes, I’m holding you accountable.
Darling—is it okay if I call you darling? I’m sorry—but please, turn the news down.
Ms. amerikkka, #MeToo, #doitfortheculture, #IwillnotdoshitforyouuntilIfigureouthowmyAfroPilipinxassgothere.
Ms. amerikkka are you going to let Instagram replace your emotional health?
I’m obsessed with Instagram.
My fingers find it whenever I try to set my nighttime alarm.
I open it when I’m sitting on the toilet.
It’s always tryna tell me what I ain’t got enough of. Models have enough. Musicians have enough. Everyone’s got enough but me.
Yo… to be honest, I think I’m amerikkka.
I am performing beat nonsense again.
Africa is apparently still entirely poor.
And I ain’t really “African”.
I’d better go back to my homeland.
My homeland consists of smoking a bowl calling my grandma getting down at Rhonda and six lines on my curriculum vitae that have not yet been authorized that will definitely land me in prison, either teaching, caged, or both.
“I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underprivileged who live in my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns” times a dead Ginsberg and 500% increase over the last 40 years.
I have deleted the personals from Craigslist,
Reddit is the next to go.
My ambition is to ally with the hoes despite the fact that I grew up mostly asexual.
Ms. amerikkka how do I dedicate a eulogy to your incessant rape?
I will keep it pushin’ like the black community’s resilience my strophes collard greens corn bread barbeque chicken at the Los Angeles MLK Jr. parade.
Ms. amerikkka this plate’s free if you don’t buy from that damned gentrified brick restaurant.
Ms. amerikkka free Chelsea Manning / free Palestine
Ms. amerikkka fuck colonization
Ms. amerikkka the indigenous healers must not die
Ms. amerikkka I am the Watts Prophets.
Ms. amerikkka when I was seven my half-Pilipin@ cousins dared me to eat a piece of cotton
we played Pokémon and they asked me what sex I was and my aunt fat-shamed us and none of us ever learned to swim because internalized racism’s rampant and I liked pancit so much but my mother never made it and my grandmother was silent about what happened during the war.
Ms. amerikkka you ain’t know what peace is.
Ms. amerikkka “its them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia’s power mad.” She wants to change our personal opinions on Facebook.
Her wants to destroy our self-care. Her needs a quinoa salad. Her wants our Apple factories. Him big pharmaceuticals giving men erections.
That no right. Ugh. Him make Indians learn computer science. Him need even bigger niggers. Hah. Her make us all think we need work 25 hours a day. Please!
Ms. amerikkka, are you fucking serious?
Ms. amerikkka, our television set seems to be skipping, I think we’ve heard this poem before.
Ms. amerikkka, how much do you really change?
I’d better start applying to that PhD.
It’s definitely true you will not find me in the Army or creating traps for people like myself, I’m transgender and too sensitive anyway.
Ms. amerikkka, my queer ass is already great.
//
My name is J. Nyla McNeill, and I am an anarchist, early career social scientist, musician, poet, and skater. I’m on Instagram as @mx.jvn.
Above is my rewrite of Allen Ginsberg’s “America,” written in 1956. It’s called “Ms. Amerikkka,” and it’s gone through many changes and met a lot of interesting audiences since 2018.
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freedomartspress · 5 years ago
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Well — Isaac Rohr
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//
@isaacrohr
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freedomartspress · 5 years ago
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Two Poems — Sam David
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1) bathtub, corner lot
This moderate October, I’m honoured in a word and considered in a movement. My material reproduction involves poetry and other questions. Boredom and other questions. Overall health that’s enviable to entire generations. Patriarchy on purpose,
it turns out. 
The state ladder - illusory or otherwise - exemplifies unimpeded survival in the best of times and stage two regression in the better of times. I will never know how to talk to kind christians and therefore settle on 
must be nice.
Not that I’m not bored all the time, but two taxi rides a day in a process love letter can’t become an old normal. A miracle can cut you down in your prime. Poems can just stop. My safety
is what it is.
I will no longer explain a god that failed although I sometimes have that dream a lot. My devastation is potential and centred in mysterious ways. The economic theory surrounding these times is authored in worship – not that I’m not.
2) wave-particle duality
Formalism is less than dazzling when confronted by it’s own face. The universal principle of elegance requires scathing reviews and unkempt societal norms not unlike those exhibited, often enough, in inner circles and other double blinds. 
The hand to hand exchange remains the most formative.
***
This red faced deconstruction say he’s a cop. Who am I to argue with such a claim to fame? Taxable income removed, thin line removed: it was never about saving lives was it? 
The human element has been removed.
***
Frowns beyond anything we could have imagined have emerged from the garden variety workaday. Folksy or not, there’s no substitute for legacy other than more legacy. Furthermore, if your breakfast is breezy, what, if anything, can be called tragic?
The calendar is brutalizing me.
***
My workday consists of gun threats and filibusters, three-figure doomsday budgets and corresponding interest rates, personal protective equipment and high tide. The anger is secondary. The facial hair is palpable. 
There’s too much life in the balance.
//
Sam David is a poet currently residing in Canada. You can find his work free at www.samdavidwords.com. Instagram: @_samdavid_ OR @samdavidwords
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freedomartspress · 5 years ago
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Concerts, Mental Health, and Parenting Fails; or, son, when you in the pit, be careful for broken glass — Tomas Moniz
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The Weeknd / 2012
I’m hella punctual. Ask my friends. Any of them. But really ask my kids. They bore the brunt of our arrivals at airports three hours before flights, the countless looks of surprise at front doors as I dragged them to birthday party after holiday party always the first to arrive.
So for once I tried to chill and not leave hours too early for the concert my thirteen year old daughter and her friend had been hyperventilating over: The Weeknd at the Shoreline Amphitheater.
Besides, who really cares about crappy mainstream concerts at massive venues.
In fact, once we secured tickets, I teased my daughter about big shows being lame, about corporate music, about sellouts, like she should have better taste in music. At thirteen.
Too often, I now realize, I used joking as a way to engage, to connect.
She tried to argue back explaining how he started as an anonymous YouTube artist. I scoffed, blind to her interest, her own sense of discovery, the way loving an artist can make you feel so alive, so understood. Unlike how her father made her feel in that moment.
I should’ve recognized this because I love music. I have incorporated it into our lives since my children were born.
So on the night of the concert, I cavalierly leave with an hour to spare before the show starts because, I mean come on, what rock show starts right on time?
Apparently this one. When we pull into the massive parking lot with thousands of other cars we hear the opening melody to “Wicked Games” my daughter begins to panic. She screams with all the intensity a thirteen year old can muster, He’s already playing!
In that moment, the tenor of her voice, that edge of hysteria, of being so close to something you idealize so intensely, I realized how much I had failed her, not supported her.
Sensing how seriously I might have fucked up, I snap: relax. It’s just a show.
My partner gave me one of those raised eyebrow did you really mean to say that in that kind of tone looks.
When we finally park, we all run but by the time we get in the venue, we hear him say Thank you Bay Area and then we watch him leave the stage. We didn’t even stay to see the headliner, Florence and the Machine, her music playing as we slowly make our way back to the car. The dog days indeed.
I wish I could have said then, what I say to her now whenever we hear either artists’ music.
I’m sorry.
Rage Against the Machine \ 1999
Walking into Oracle Arena in Oakland, California to see Rage Against the Machine with my nine year old son, we see a drunken fan smash the windshield of a parked police car. And then another car. He screams some obscenity and runs into the crowd leaving a weird vibe of random violence. My son takes my hand.
Me: What an idiot.
Also Me: Countless times prior to said incident blasting songs that extol random violence.
Later, the crowd in unison sings a popular song playing over the loudspeaker. It has the lyrics: if your bitch talks shit, I’m slapping the ho, leaving this distressing vibe of having a good time while singing about toxic masculinity and assault.
I want to leave. But I don’t. I want to cover his ears. But I don’t. I take my son’s hand and try to address it.
Me: This song is stupid.
Also Me: Countless times prior to said incident playing similar songs with sexist lyrics in front of my son.
There is nothing worse than your hypocrisy that your children witness, not your failed attempts at trying, not your mistakes because those things are out of your control. But hypocrisy is the arrogance and entitlement of the old do what I say, not what I do approach. I know it’s not the way I want to relate with my children.
On the way home, I need to try. I know I may not say the right thing, but I know I have to say something.
Me: I had a good time but felt weird about a couple things.
Also Me: How did you feel?
Interlude / Hip Hop
I text my daughter:
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Three Different Artists \ 2017
Nov 17: Lil Peep ODs and my daughter is visibly upset. I don’t want to say the wrong thing, so I say nothing. Which, of course, is exactly the wrong thing.
I find his music on Spotify and choose the most popular song.
I yell to her, Is this his best song?
Without saying a word, from her room, she overrides my choice with his best song: “Awful Things.”
We play his music all day.
May18th: Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell dies by suicide. I’m visibly upset. We play their music all day.
July 20th: Linkin Park's singer dies by suicide. News breaks while we drive to the redwoods to camp for the weekend. We both know what to do. We play their music. We sing at the top of our lungs: All I want to do is be more like me and less like you.
Each of these occasions, my daughter and I discuss mental health, addiction, the beauty and power of music. I try to talk less and listen more. I thank her for being honest with me. Of course, still needling her as a flawed form of communication, I tease her for turning me on to such good music.
The Fleshies / 2004
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I love the confidence of young teens strolling into the most cutty of places like they don’t give a fuck. My fourteen year old son and I renew our 924 Gilman Street membership card, pay the eight dollar cover, walk past Gilman’s posted rules (see image) and grab a spot on the one super grimy couch in the back. There’s a mix of young punks as well as aging, grey haired old fogeys like me, all watching The Fleshies, a popular East Bay pop punk band. My son stands on the top of the couch watching the pit go wild. And although there’s no drinking at Gilman someone (most likely an old fogey like me) brought in a bottle that promptly drops and shatters on the floor, but no one does anything. The singer, mid-set and shirtless, jumps into the pit and begins rolling on the ground. I see the broken bottle shards glistening in the lights. I lean over to my son and say: always look for things that can hurt you in the pit.
He shakes his head and looks at me like duh, and moves closer to the action.
And, yes most likely, away from his parent as well.
But It’s ok. I’m cool with that. Because I know he heard me.
Get in the pit, son.
Be careful.
But get in there.
Riot Grrrl Reunion \ January 15th 2019
Bikini Kill announce a series of concerts, two in NYC. But one in LA. A five hour drive from Oakland.
I text my daughter:
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Father daughter road trip and trust me: we won’t be late.
//
TOMAS MONIZ edited Rad Dad, Rad Families, and the kids book Collaboration/Colaboración. He’s recently been published by Barrelhouse and Longleaf Review. In July 2019, he released a chapbook, All Friends Are Necessary, with Mason Jar Press and his debut novel, Big Familia, on Acre Books (which received a STARRED Kirkus review), in November. He has stuff on the internet but loves letters and penpals: ​PO Box 3555, Berkeley CA 94703 He promises to write back.
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freedomartspress · 5 years ago
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HIDING -- gabrielle davis
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Triceratops knew that the end was nearing. The Earth was sentient after all, and the rocks had warned him of their distant cousin coming to meet them in a way less friendly than catastrophic. This was very frightening, as Triceratops failed to even remotely fathom an absence of his life, a total erasure of all he’d done and everything he knew. Plunging into darkness, the reality of everything being obsolete, and the distant strain of nihilism that all of these factors tend to breed converged into the ultimate crisis cocktail, driving Triceratops away from everything and everyone he knew and loved in its total absorption both figuratively and literally; Triceratops found himself exiled in a sort of cave some days after the rocks’ announcement. He was wrapped around himself in the fetal position, simultaneously indulging in and darting away from the terror of not knowing, the terror of dying, the unfairness of not choosing to be born but required to die. He had fallen silently alongside his surroundings some hours ago, and yet was not even slightly phased at the soft padding of feet rhythmically on the damp cave floor. His eyes remained sealed shut by the moistness of tears-at-the-ready and his body remained dormant as a firm head pressed itself into his back, but at the least this simple contact roused from his throat a thick, choking sob. Triceratops’ visitor sighed empathetically at this and rested beside his rigid body, settling to speak.
“Fixating on the end neither pushes it away nor draws it nearer. You are only succeeding in preventing yourself from fully loving those around you, for all the time you have left.”
Triceratops responded with a groan and writhed on the ground half-heartedly, his voice laden with the weight of futility: “With the limited time we have left, how could I ever show the extent of my love to the people around me?”
The answer was at once succinct and profound: “Not like this.”
Triceratops fell back into a silence, but this one was restless. His massive heart thudded in his broad chest with a torrential roar, welcome in the way it throbbed within his skull. His visitor continued. “We had the pleasure of being there for the beginning of the world; it would be greedy to ask for us to be the end. We are undeserving.” A breath, gentle; a continuation. “It is time to let something else have this life, and I feel whatever is next has the ability to be something glorious.”
This affirmation made Triceratops smile, and he held onto that thought: the thought that the world after him would be glorious, all the way out of his cave and into the arms of all that he loved. The comet was coming, he could hear it coming, and he prayed and hoped that the world after him would be better. He wouldn’t know, nor could he tell you that the blinding light of the mini-sun’s collision with Earth was white-bright, brand new, and glorious indeed.
//
gabrielle is an indigenous poet, artist, and student barely living in nyc. they hate many things and love even more. find them on instagram @heartstompilation to learn more.
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freedomartspress · 5 years ago
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Toilet Event — Peter Belly
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In sleep, I went up to heaven and peeked in to see whether I could recognize my brother’s face among the angels. No such luck. The faces were all the same, all made from the same mold. Then I asked. One of those saints came over to me and, without a word, sunk his hand into my stomach, like he would have poked into a ball of wax. When he pulled out his hand, he showed me something that looked like a nutshell. He said, “This proves what I’m demonstrating to you.”
I was then stirred partially awake by some uncharacteristic banging on the front door to my apartment. It was only about six in the morning, so I waited for my roommates to get it, figuring it was for one of them.
I finally roused myself up enough to realize the urgency of the door smashing and then what they were shouting, “Fire Department! Open up!” I leapt out of bed and grabbed my pair of pants hanging on the back of my desk chair and rushed to the door. I unlocked it, swung it open, and confronting me were five large men in full fire department gear standing there looking at me in my underwear. The foremost one had a four foot pry bar in the doorframe, about to wretch the thing from its hinges. I moved the pants in my hand over my bare legs and realized I was standing in a couple inches of liquid. I looked to my right which is down the hallway, a straight shot to the open bathroom where a fucking torrent of water is shooting out of the toilet bowl.
All five fire department guys craned their heads in the door at the same time to look and then rushed passed me to the toilet. One of them slips in the hustle and cartoonishly falls on his ass, another flushes it and it stops immediately. I run to the kitchen and back and begin baling water into the ancient, stained bathtub with a dustpan. One of the fire department guys says, “aww no, you’re gonna want to use a shopvac. Do you know what a shop vac is?” “What? Of course I know what a shop vac is, have you got a shop vac?” “Umm us? No. Not here.” “Then what are you saying? I should truck over to the hardware store, buy a shop vac, and come back?” “Uhh. No.” I contemplated the possibility that this firefighter might in fact have a shop vac up his ass, and that he may simply need some privacy with which to pass it, then he could help me, but I refrain from mentioning it.
I continue baling. They leave. One of my roommates wakes up, of course waiting until I’d finished hurling all the water out of the hallway and down the drain and mopping up the place. Then I have to relate the whole story to him. And then two of my other roommates wake up and I have to tell them, and then three other roommates wake up and I have to tell them, and then
my final roommate wakes up and I dart out the door and to the corner store for a cheese danish and a length of thick gauge rope to hang myself with.
Then work. I just got ripped off by the boss on a demo crew who decided one fine morning that he was done paying his employees. We were all expecting pay for a month’s worth of body- breaking labor. The bossman said he needed another pay period to ride out a rough patch, that he was waiting on a big check. We finished the job. The asshole vanished. Nothing runs as efficiently as a business.
I got a new job. Two hour commute from the only neighborhood I can afford to live in to the only job I could get. This is where the rich people live, they practice tightrope walking in the park to help their performance in the boardroom while their children roll around in inflatable plastic orbs. Outside before the shift, I was freezing for no reason and I wanted to turn back. I thought if I went back I might find the warmth I’d left behind, but I realized after I paced a bit that the cold was coming from me, from my own blood. Then I realized I was afraid.
I went in. The fluorescent air was filled with gray currents, everything was surface. I am below. I look up. I see the constructions up there, the confusion of long beams possible. It’s big. And the boss is so dumb, so cruel, their voice is more an odor. After a few hours I don’t listen to anything they say anymore. I just can’t. Two hour commute from the only job I could get to the only neighborhood I can afford to live in.
Here there are no fruits, no vegetables, the wonderbread has to be dropped off by a u-haul truck because the distributor won’t come to the only neighborhood I can afford to live in. I have an apple in my backpack, I munch it before a cop can wretch it from my hands. I watch kids smash littered bottles against a cinderblock wall. I walk past the laundromat. A woman who works there is being detained by immigration and customs enforcement. The woman realizes her situation, removes and throws her tennis shoe at one of them, then, after a brief chase… three sets of handcuffs. Wrist to wrist. Ankle to ankle. Wrist cuffs to ankle cuffs. Plainclothes carried her away and threw her like a suitcase into the backseat of a black SUV.
There is hardly any soil, and any that there is, is most likely riddled with lead and other heavy metals. This was all industrial park before capital picked up and left to a land where the geo-political situation was such that they could force people to work for cheaper than a machine’s upkeep. You can count all the trees on your hand. You walk up the five flights to your apartment and the toilet has exploded again.
//
peter belly is a professional smoker. svelte silhouette, cinched jacket. pouring out novella onto waffle iron. aloe tiger beside rhinestone radiator. come on then, come on in
@peterjbelly
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freedomartspress · 5 years ago
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After "On the other side of the senses there are invisible kittens" — Noah Mazer
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Yesterday the landlords took my keys without telling me And I was late to work and fuming and riding on the sidewalk Because in Polanco there are no bike lanes and the street there at seven is full of Porsches I crashed and snapped the pedal of the city bike in half And took a handlebar to my stomach When I could get up again I pedaled And realized I was a half mile past Alejandro Dumas And I turned back and taught class with the beginnings of a concussion
Which is why today I’m lying on the roof Skipping work and sleeping in the wind that blows off the mountain —El trabajo no es un privilegio—es una mierda
—– noah mazer is a poet & translator working in mexico city @nowamazur
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freedomartspress · 5 years ago
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Three Poems — Tongo Eisen Martin
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Kick Drum Only
All street life to a certain extent starts fair
Sometimes with a spiritual memory even
Predawn soul-clap/ your father dying even
Maybe I’ve pushed the city too far
My sensitivities to landfill districting and minstrel whistles/
White supremacist graffiti on westbound rail guards 
-all overcome and reauthored
The garbage is growing voices
Condensed Marxism 
modal gangsterism for a warrior-depressive
Underpass in my pocket
because I am a deity
or decent bid on the Panther name 
revolutionary violence that chose its own protagonists 
or muted stage of genius
A merciful Marxism        
Disquieted home life 
Or metaphor for relaxing next to a person 
Who is relaxing next to a gun
I stare at my father for a few seconds 
Then return to my upbringing
Return to the souls of Ohio Black folks
Revolution is damn near pagan at this point
You know what the clown wants? The respect of the ant. 
Wants a pen cap full of bullets
Wants to see their ancestors in broad daylight
I am not tired of these rooms; just tired of the world that give them a relativity 
My only change of clothes prosecuted
The government has finally learned how to write poems
shoot-outs that briefly align…
that make up a parable
white bodies are paid well, I posit
do white men actually even have leaders?
all white people are white men
white men will only ever be metaphors
all I do is practice, Lord
A rat pictures a river
Can almost taste the racial divide
Can almost roll a family member’s head into a city hall legislative chamber
Knows who in this good book will fly
I have decided not to talk out of anger ever again, Lord
Met my wife at the same time I met new audience members for our pain
We passed each other cigarettes and watched cops win
A city gone uniquely linear
Harlem of the West due a true universe 
 “I will always remember you in fancy clothes,” my wife said 
so here I sit… twisting in silk ideation
  My rifle made of tar
My targets made of an honest language
This San Francisco poetry is how God knows that it is me whining 
Writing among the lesser-respected wolves
Lesser-observed militarization
Dixie-less prison bookkeeping/I mean the California gray-coats are coming 
lynch mob gossip and bourgeois debt collection
I mean, it’s tempting to change professions mid-poem
in a Chicago briefing, a white sergeant saying, “blank slate for all of us after this Black organizer is dead.”
standard academics toasting two-buck wine at the tank parade
bay of nothing, Lord
  nuclear cobblestones, gunline athleticism  
and the last of the inherited asthma
children given white dolls to play with and fear
facial expressions borrowed from rich people’s shoe strings
I can hear hate
And teach hate
And call tools by people names
And name people dead to themselves
no one getting naturalized except federal agents soon 
carving the equator into throats soon
I’m sorry to make you relive all of this, Lord
pre-dawn monarchy 
friends putting up politician posters then snorting the remainder of the paste
minstrel scripts shoveled into the walls by their elders
my children sharpening quarters on the city’s edge
For these audiences
I project myself into a ghost like state
For these gangsters, I do the same
every now and then, we take a nervous look east
Sleep becomes Christ
Sleep starts growing a racial identity
do you ever spiral, Lord?
has the gang-age betrayed us?
be patient with my poems, Lord
So much pain
there is a point to crime… 
There has to be if race traitors come with it
 Lord, is that my revolver in your hand?
Better presidents than these have yawned at cages
Have called us holy slaves
Filled the school libraries with cop documentaries
Baby, I don’t have money for food
I have no present moment at all
/
I Do Not Know the Spelling of Money
I go to the railroad tracks
And follow them to the station of my enemies
A cobalt-toothed man pitches pennies at my mugshot negative
All over the united states, there are
Toddlers in the rock
I see why everyone out here got in the big cosmic basket
And why blood agreements mean a lot
And why I get shot back at
I understand the psycho-spiritual refusal to write white history or take the glass freeway
White skin tattooed on my right forearm 
Ricochet sewage near where I collapsed 
into a rat-infested manhood
My new existence as living graffiti 
In the kitchen with
a lot of gun cylinders to hack up
House of God in part
No cops in part
My body brings down the Christmas 
The new bullets pray over blankets made from old bullets
Pray over the 28th hour’s next beauty mark
Extrajudicial confederate statue restoration 
the waist band before the next protest poster 
By the way,
Time is not an illusion, your honor
I will return in a few whirlwinds
I will save your desk for last
You are witty, your honor
You’re moving money again, your honor
It is only raining one thing: non-white cops
And prison guard shadows 
Reminding me of
Spoiled milk floating on an oil spill
A neighborhood making a lot of fuss over its demise
A new lake for a Black Panther Party
Malcom X’s ballroom jacket slung over my son’s shoulders
Pharmacy doors mid-slide
         The figment of village
                     a noon noose to a new white preacher
Wiretaps in the discount kitchen tile
-All in an abstract painting of a president
Bought slavers some time, didn’t it?
The tantric screeches of military bolts and Election-Tuesday cars
A cold-blooded study in leg irons
Leg irons in tornado shelters
Leg irons inside your body
  Proof that some white people have actually fondled nooses
That sundown couples 
made their vows of love over   
opaque peach plastic
and bolt action audiences     
Man, the Medgar Evers-second is definitely my favorite law of science
Fondled news clippings and primitive Methodists 
My arm changes imperialisms 
Simple policing vs. Structural frenzies
Elementary school script vs. Even whiter white spectrums
Artless bleeding and
the challenge of watching civilians think
     “terrible rituals they have around the corner. They let their elders beg for public mercy…beg for settler polity”
“I am going to go ahead and sharpen these kids’ heads into arrows myself and see how much gravy spills out of family crests.”
Modern fans of war
    What with their t-shirt poems
    And t-shirt guilt
And me, having on the cheapest pair of shoes on the bus, 
I have no choice but to read the city walls for signs of my life
                                                                                     /
The Chicago Prairie Fire
First, I must apologize to the souls of the house
I am wearing the cheek bones of the mask only
Pill bottle, my name is yours
Name tagged on the side of a factory of wrists
Teeth of the mask now
Back of the head of the mask now 
        New phase of anti-anthropomorphism fending for real faces
Stuck with one of those cultures that believes I chose this family
I am not creative
Just the silliest of the revolutionaries
My blood drying on 
   my only jacket
just as God got playful
the police state’s psychic middlemen
Evangelizing for the creation of an un-masses 
An un-Medgar
Blood of a lamb less racialized
or awesome prison sentence
Good God
Elder-abuse hired for the low
dog eat genius
Right angle made between a point
On a Louisiana plantation
And 5-year old’s rubber ball 
3 feet high and falling
like a deportee plane 
to complete my interpretation 
(of garden variety genocide) 
I am small talk
about loving your enemies
A little more realistically
About paper tigers 
And also gold…
I need my left hand back 
I broke my neck on the piano keys
Found paradise in a fistfight
Maybe I should check into the Cuba line
Watching the universe’s last metronomes
some call Black Jacobins
Just wait…
These religions will start resigning in a decade or two
Some colorfully 
Some transactional-ly
In a cotton gothic society
Class betrayal gone glassless/ I mean ironically/ my window started fogging over too 
Wondering which Haiti will get me through this winter
Which poem houses souls
Which socialist breakthroughs
Breakthroughs like ten steps back
Then finally stillness
Stillness
Then stillness among families
a John Brown biography takes a bow
I’m up next to introduce Prosser to Monk
I remember childhood
Remember the word “Childhood” being a beginning 
Scribbling on an amazing grace 
I rented this body from some circumference of slavery
Remember being kicked out of the Midwest
Strange fruit theater
Lithium and circuses
Likeminded stomachs 
The ruling class blessing their blank checks with levy foam…
                            with opioid tea 
Sentient dollar bills yelling to each other pocket to pocket
Cello stands in the precinct for accompanying counterrevolutionaries 
My mother raised me with a simple pain
A poet loses his mind, you know, like the room has weather
Or first-girlfriend gravity
Police-knock gravity 
Mind-game gravity
Or revolution languishing behind 
The sugar in my good friend’s mind
“The difference between me and you
Is that the madness
Wants me forever”
A pair of apartments
Defining both my family
And political composure
Books behind my back
Bail money paved into the streets
Playing:
Euphoria
Euphoria
Cliché
Bracing for the medicine’s recoil
Sharing a dirty deli sandwich with my friends
Black Jacobins
Underground topography
Or grandmother’s hands
Psychology of the mask now
Teeth of the mask again
Originally from San Francisco, Tongo Eisen-Martin is a movement worker and educator who has organized against mass incarceration and extra-judicial killing of Black people throughout the United States. His latest curriculum on extrajudicial killing of Black people, We Charge Genocide Again, has been used as an educational and organizing tool throughout the country. His book of poems, Someone’s Dead Already was nominated for a California Book Award.
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freedomartspress · 5 years ago
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I’m Busy Motherfucker — Steele
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she can pull on my jacket but I’
m gonna go smoke. they can
whine but I’m gonna stay jealous.
y’all can try to put a bullet through
my thick-as-fuck skull, but if I
come across a fruit tree—I’
ll fell it. look, who the fuck are you? 
just some asshole that history 
accidentally gave money? and 
what are you good for? I mean 
unless you bleed honey.
--
Steele is a poet from the Shenandoah Valley. You can follow them in twitter @laborseller
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freedomartspress · 5 years ago
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A Low Sun — Diego Bravo
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A Low Sun
  You don’t know what you’ve been told and so you are.
a sweep by your feet and you pick them up for the woman cleaning under them at the Mexican restaurant your boyfriend took you to on east 14th.
white woman shawl over shoulders and your skin is the color of closed eyelids of the sun in the windows on a long drive.
and your skin lay down to you like gentleman coat over a puddle.
and so the one around you and the ones around you and the dirt in their nails and the dirt by their feet.
and what about the one who pull you up and the one who’s shoulders you stand on over milk crate. a baby in a rag.
a house of wood and all its belongings that are wood and made at some time and the memories you have of the wood and the some time. a rug somewhere and your toes deep in it. it is a smell and a warm touch that is deep under your skin and smells like wood that is old and wood that has set in itself.
and then the other house and the other door and the dog food smell and the other and the door with no lock but a hook instead. and it’s another house and the other with the window with no glass but tape. small bad dog. my dad had an old wallet and i used to count his money and it made him feel bad. to sleep toe to toe with the door with no lock but a hook instead.
it’s a small moment and it’s an eye to eye over the table. it’s a smile with curled teeth and it’s a sharp cheek and sometimes no more than a hunch. a back with freckles and red fingers.
a skin the color of light on a sky and You are the dawn and what am I.
--
Diego grew up in Richmond Ca. He loves his people and believes in war with the bloodsuckers of the poor. He likes to write and thinks it’s a valuable tool in dismantling systems of power. twitter
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freedomartspress · 5 years ago
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Revelation — Hudson Everett
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Revelation
   I want to make money
disappear.
I want to turn
nothing into something
and back again until you can't remember where it is.
I want all that is solid.
I want to stop melting into air.
I want my bank account to slowly evaporate. I want to learn
to lay still on my debt
like quicksand,
can't be sucked into default.
I never reveal one simple trick
the doctors hate me,
the dentists mostly agree,
the optometrists turn a blind eye,
the psychiatrists pathologize my hatred
of a system that they profit from, like vampires hidden from society's reflection,
telling us we're greedy for wanting to keep all our blood inside ourselves.
   --
Hudson Everett hates capitalism and writes things sometimes. https://twitter.com/hudlion
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freedomartspress · 5 years ago
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Amerikkkana — Nicolas Vargas
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Amerikkkana      
  is the ghosted skin 
of billboard highways
  is the creeping desert
of the imagination under 
  our terror of a national womb
as poor as dirt as wretched as earth
  liberty, you raggedy torch
keep us in the dark 
  another dayless week
so we can see 
  where the fire hides
like an acrid turncoat
  mundane violence  
automated animus 
  stripping the sky 
& stripmall towns apart 
  along the sinew of its state
sometimes you will not see
  a cop car on the long leg
of a road trip but you know
  they’re there waiting to feed
you to the prison’s mouth
  red lights in the rearview
lets see who catches smoke first
--
Nicolas is a community organizer, youth leader and a make-believe poet. Free Mumia. @pigmentpariah on twitter.
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