Monday, June 22, 2020
Juneteenth Poems
If you read just one poem this week, make it Jill Scoggins's haiku:
“What’s Juneteenth, Moma?”
“Slaves fine'ly learned they’d been freed.”
“Who kept it from them?”
Silence. A long pause.
Moma was thinking, thinking … then,
“White people. Like us.”
Meanwhile MKS said hers was a precurser to Christine's, so here it is:
The war was over
For two more years they waited.
Emancipation.
And here is Christine's:
Juneteenth, not much changed
one hundred and fifty five
years later, waiting...
We had this from the Medievalist:
Juneteenth just shows us
How far we still have to go,
Slavery is bad.
And an entry from my dad! (quoting Janis Joplin, a Texan):
Freedom is just an-
other word for nothing left to
lose Janis Joplin
Free to stand up this
Juneteenth, for many there is still
nothing left to lose
And one I read over several times, from Robert Johnson, a story picture:
A black landowner,
named Salls, would visit Mema
and Papa often.
Mema always had
coffee and coffee cake there,
for him to enjoy.
“What’s Juneteenth, Moma?”
“Slaves fine'ly learned they’d been freed.”
“Who kept it from them?”
Silence. A long pause.
Moma was thinking, thinking … then,
“White people. Like us.”
Meanwhile MKS said hers was a precurser to Christine's, so here it is:
The war was over
For two more years they waited.
Emancipation.
And here is Christine's:
Juneteenth, not much changed
one hundred and fifty five
years later, waiting...
We had this from the Medievalist:
Juneteenth just shows us
How far we still have to go,
Slavery is bad.
And an entry from my dad! (quoting Janis Joplin, a Texan):
Freedom is just an-
other word for nothing left to
lose Janis Joplin
Free to stand up this
Juneteenth, for many there is still
nothing left to lose
And one I read over several times, from Robert Johnson, a story picture:
A black landowner,
named Salls, would visit Mema
and Papa often.
Mema always had
coffee and coffee cake there,
for him to enjoy.
