This poem is part of the special section, New Poems of U.S. History, reflecting on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence selected by editors Carolivia Herron, Summer Tate, and Robert Bettmann. You can read more about the section on the Day Eight website here.

“If Phillis Wheatley stood for anything, it was the creed that culture was, could be, the equal possession of all humanity. It was a lesson she was swift to teach, and that we have been slow to learn. But the learning has begun.” – Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

At seven you were captured and enslaved
sent half a world away from all you knew
to Boston, where a wealthy merchant’s wife
acquired you cheaply, wanting household help

She named you for the ship that sealed your fate
thus forced the memory of its dark role
it took you where you never chose to go
and left you to endure and overcome

The woman’s teenaged daughter tutored you
and soon you showed precocity and skill
in English, Latin and the Bible you
astonished many with keen intellect

You soon wrote poems of beauty and renown
you dazzled those who read the published verse
made known by she who bought you, who then sought
to gather your poems into a true book

Despite admirers who would fund the work
there were loud voices questioning your gifts
and doubting you had authored these bright words
demanding that you prove yourself to them

They put you through a sort of oral trial
where you were questioned closely. No one knows
what they or you said at that conference
but you won their endorsement of your worth

Your fame and popularity still failed
to give you long security. You died
in poverty, bereaved of all three born
to you, and faced your earthly end alone

After one hundred years the memory
of your work still lived on. But even then
there were harsh critics who condemned your words
not that you could not, only that you should not

have written what the modern mind despised
they looked for anger and found only grace
they sought resentment and found gratitude
they said you were too white to be admired

Frost wrote that when the howling mob is led
to carry praise or blame too far, we must
choose something like a star to stay our minds on
you lived this truth before these words were penned

I see you, Phillis Wheatley, even now
your authenticity outlives the spite
and shining through our history, black or white,
two hundred fifty years and more, your light.

Featured image pbs.org, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

This poem is part of the special section, New Poems of U.S. History, reflecting on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence selected by editors Carolivia Herron, Summer Tate, and Robert Bettmann. You can read more about the section on the Day Eight website here.

The towers keep

falling. The towers

keep falling. The

towers keep falling.

The towers keep

falling. The towers

keep falling. The

towers keep falling.

Again. The plane.

The blast. The towers

keep falling. On TV,

on every channel I turn

to, the towers keep

falling / falling / falling.

I want to leave.

I want to see.

I don’t want to

see the towers

falling. Even when

the news anchor tells

me again. How do the

towers keep falling?

The towers keep

falling. My heart

drops within my

body. Another body.

The towers keep

f

a

l

l

i

n

g.

Featured image Carol M. Highsmith, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

This poem is part of the special section, New Poems of U.S. History, reflecting on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence selected by editors Carolivia Herron, Summer Tate, and Robert Bettmann. You can read more about the section on the Day Eight website here.

It’s 1920 and Clara opens her eyes
to meet her daughter at the 27th week.
She hears, a few minutes…maybe hours,
and then remembers: Coney Island Pier
a sign that read: “with living infants” where the feet
of gawkers pointed to an exhibit of America’s first

incubators. Clara tries to breathe her daughter in first,
as if inhaling could push the girl’s eyes
open. She cabs to the fair, her babe’s feet
tiny as the raw, stray peanuts she saw last week
scattered like confetti on the pier.
She arrives less than two hours

later to the exhibit: a line of machines rumored to will hours
from weaklings, manned by a make-do-doctor. First,
he weighs them then risks to peer
pass these babes’ spokes of arms, their ruddy buckeyes
of heads and boney legs, however weak.
While MD’d cynics championed robust, effete

cherubs, Dr. Couney hears the unfinished stomp in little feet.
Spectators encircle the incubators for hours.
Why do we gawk, enraptured by this weak
space that divides us from our first,
unfinished selves? Do our insatiate eyes
hope to unearth happier

outcomes than our own? Days on, Clara’s girl, Elizabeth, can peer
at her own, clumsy starfish of hands, her twitching feet,
inhabited eggs. But is she actually here yet, if her eyes
confuse the sun’s glare with ours?
Who are we first—
a person seeing or a person seen? A week

on Dr. Couney continues to gradually tweak
life into Lizzy. That haterchy—peer after peer,
each babe offering a first
of something. Outside the crowd of feet
part for two people, trembling: “She’s ours!”
until their gaze meets two familiar eyes.

So, Lizzy, that’s mom and dad, appearing at your feet.
This begins the first of many hours,
many weeks wherein you’ll find yourself by looking to their eyes.

Featured image See page for author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

This poem is part of the special section, New Poems of U.S. History, reflecting on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence selected by editors Carolivia Herron, Summer Tate, and Robert Bettmann. You can read more about the section on the Day Eight website here.

On the 250th anniversary
of the Boston Tea Party,
I sip my obligatory mug
of English breakfast tea
with the usual misgivings,

never switching to coffee
like a true American,
though my Scots-Irish
forebears spent centuries
under British rule

before immigrating to
the Colonies. So, two
cheers for the Empire
and its legacy, and zero
cheers for the plutocracy

that seems to have
replaced it. The kings now
all wear business suits
and ride bulletproof limos
down Rodeo Drive.

But the custom survives
for steeping baked leaves
at 212 degrees, then adding
sugar and a splash of cream
to tame the bitterness.

Featured image Cornischong at lb.wikipedia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons