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Kenneth Carroll | Genocide Anonymous | Odes to Reuben Jackson

Updated: Jul 30

Reuben in Palestine 3/24/2024

We sit in the Sunday sun of the Arts Walk,

It is laughter & smiles that bloom between

Sami’s multi-tongued art & Brandon’s emcee prep

Today you tell me that you were supposed to go to Palestine

A writer’s retreat to share your Carolina/DC aesthetics

To discover that the breeze from the Mediterranean

Carry the verses of Baraka and Darwish, Jordan and Tuquan

You say “suppose” like that Black folk supposed to be equal,

Like that disappointment that wakes you up

for several hundred years in a racist nation,

You Reuben, of the economic use of cusswords, say

“it’s a motherfucking shame,” shorthand for amputated babies

rubble as tomb for entire generations of imprisoned poets

their poems tortured and ripped from the land like ancient olive trees,

call it US funded exile if you like, Palestinian refugee blues in your own land

My mother was afraid you say, begged me not to go, knew that if

They'd kill Rachel then they’d kill Reuben, her baby boy.

And so, your cup filled with another regret

We imagined the overflowing journals, nightly talks of poetics

Freedom, Shorter and Bley with writers from the River to the Sea

They would have loved you as I love you as you loved us.

Go now Reuben as spirit, go now to Rafah and Khan Younis, Jabalia,

go to the Westbank, unfettered go now as windblown ashes

to tell the living and the dead, the starving, the tortured and the resistance,

let them hear your words, assure them that freedom will come like

pages of scattered clouds. ___ reuben in palestine 2

long solo, for the children of gaza

alexandria jazzfest “you know, i want to be a force for real good. in other words, i know that there are bad forces, forces put here that bring suffering to others and misery to the world, but i want to be the force which is truly for good.”

- john coltrane

 

you have been gone old poet, long enough for a quarter year

of moon rises and the beckoning of the summer equinox


but it is still with us, the unyielding solo of horror,

it's daily clarion, off the key of humanity


it lures the hungry children of rafah, khan younis

to come to dine only to reduce to them to blood & screams


you were going to gaza, before the latest slaughter

to talk about trane and his solos infused with faith & swing

to tell the children of ellington and weather reports of beauty


but the children are treated to this long solo of dismembered memories

a solo old as the nakba, of zionist cacophony orchestrated by US weapons


you wanted to share our nation’s greatest gifts,

poets and musicians old as armstrong & bolden in congo square.

you wanted to introduce the opening strains of Trane’s Naimi

as a soft bridge over language barriers


why does evil get such a long solo,

the audience begs the band leader stop it,

can they do more than look away from the children

ears torn, heads torn “herod took their little heads”


what kind of nation are we, you asked, days before your death

you who spent a lifetime curating the music for lovers of life

making us understand the great possibilities of craft, word, and song


children of gaza, my friend was coming to share this nation’s classical music,

he was interrupted.

who will interrupt this horrible morbid song from the curators of

hate?

___

6/27/2024

Kenneth Carroll is a native Washingtonian. His writings have appeared in numerous literary journals, national magazines and newspapers. He was a 2021 nominee for the Pushcart Poetry Prize and the 2021 Blood Orange Review winner in fiction. He received a US Humanities Award for his youth literacy work while director of DC WritersCorps. He is former director of the African American Writers Guild and has performed at the Kennedy Center, Nuyorican Café, Library of Congress, universities and cultural institutions around the country. His book of poetry is entitled So What: For The White Dude Who Said This Ain’t Poetry (The Bunny and the Crocodile Press, 1997). His plays have appeared in print and on stage, including in Ishmael Reed’s Konch Magazine and the University of the District of Columbia Playwright Festival. He is the proud father of a daughter and two sons.



(Photo by Derek Baker)



 

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