These poems are 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.

Buffalo Bill

After E.E. Cummings

“In eighteen months, I killed four thousand two hundred and eighty buffaloes.”
⎯Buffalo Bill, upon winning a contest to feed railroad workers

Bill, my blue-eyed boy, you knew
those hairy humpbacks, gentle beasts:
you called the bison ‘buffaloes,’
then stole the name you gave them.

they could be a flash flood!
how they pawed sod, Alberta to Texas.
how they thundered, untethered and free,
shaking the ground beneath your feet.

you watched natives hunt in buffalo robes.
saw them dance in those very same clothes.
sat with them as they ate the meat, carved the bones.
you knew they filled their lives with buffalos.

from belching, metal trains, you hunters came
clackity-clack along railroad tracks;
the rifle bursts, crack, crack, crack.

then miners came to stake their claims;

ranchers brought cattle and all their chattel;

farmers turned the ground upside down.

after all the disagreements,
broken treaties and barbarous laws;
after all your sideshows and spectacles,
all the shoot, loot and disrepute,
the only real buffalo left is you, Bill.

Social Dis-ease & Our Body Politic

a culture as putrid as any in a petri dish:
alternative facts, jabberwocky and lies;

curiosities and conspiracies, real and imagined;
a tragic magic that rival wizards and witches pitch,

conjuring up our founding fathers
and featuring our floundering children.

without treatment, this hideous dis-ease spreads,
intensifies the way, let’s say, syphilis comes and goes,

then returns: first a sore, a firm chancre, round,
painless, near where the disease first enters,

followed by a clearing and latency. later—weeks,
months, years—brown and red rashes bloom,

cover the entire body with an intense itch,
one that worsens at the extremities.

lastly, failure of mind over muscle:
at times this looks like dementia;

other times, it appears as paralysis.
either way, every organ of the body dies.

Featured image Jack Dykinga, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

These poems are 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.

Aspiration Pneumonia, 1971

A History and Sociology of Willowbrook State School

The kitchen grinds the food to prevent choking:
Vegetable slush, stale bread soaked in sour milk.

So few attendants, three minutes per child.

The ablest grab from the nearest plate, the less
dexterous dump the plate, lap from the floor.

The least capable crowd the aide,
jostle for a turn from the shared bowl.

With a big spoon we ladle it into their mouths,
from the last back to the first again.

A boy gulps all he can from the spoon, eats
and breathes at once, food lodges in his lungs.

So few attendants, three minutes per child.

The nurse takes a breath each time she must
place the call, three or four times a month:

“Your son has expired,” she tells our mother.
As if he were a loaf of bread, a jug of milk.

Fifty Years After Willowbrook

“Now we have small Willowbrooks.” Ida Rios, Willowbrook parent

1. Purple bruises on her breasts and buttocks, a shoe print on her belly

After Jane Kurtin, Geraldo Rivera, the Staten Island Advance, ABC news
After the New York Civil Liberties Union, the Legal Aid Society, the class-action lawsuit
After the consent decree, the “Constitutional right to protection from harm”
After children were transferred to group homes throughout New York
After Willowbrook closed for good in 1987
After the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act
After promising 6,000 alumni “high-quality services for the rest of their lives”
After placing Willowbrook survivors at the Union Avenue home in the Bronx
After advocates formed a Consumer Advisory Board to hear grievances
After understaffing and undertraining and inadequate oversight
After assembly-line showers, restraints, seclusion, denial of food
After visitors wondered about suspicious bruises
After whistleblowers at Union Avenue warned family members of abuse
After hair-pulling and slapping and spitting
After black eyes, burns, cuts, stitches, sexual assault
After a federal civil rights lawsuit. After a $6 million settlement
After the state declined to bring criminal charges
After state employees were not fired, but transferred to other group homes

Featured image Scan by NYPL, 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 150th anniversary of the founding of the Town of Washington Grove, Maryland

Before there was a town —fields,
and before the fields
a forest. Chestnut, Oak, Hickory,
Maple. Quartz quarries speak
of an age before even trees.
Tonight we sing of songs
no longer sung and songs to be.

Who came here first? Ancestors
of the birds whose choruses
greet dawn and bid the day adieu,
behemoth saurids whose long strides
shook tender ground. Then fire
and ice, rains upon rains,
woodland and marsh, green springs,
golden autumns. New migrants
followed game down long river valleys.
They came to hunt, to plant, to chip
the pale stones, shape the red clay.

We cannot know the names
they called themselves — Their songs
forgotten now. And who came after?
Farmers and refugees who cleared
timber to make fences, played
their lonesome fiddles late
into the night.

Farm wagons followed tracks
laid down by deer, dusty in summer,
muddy and rutted in spring. Chickens
ran where turkeys gobbled once.
Cattle took the place of deer, dogs
howled to a moon that saw it all
before we came to linger here.

There were drums of war. No battle
here, only widows wearing weeds
to grieve. There were lilacs in the yard.

Before there was a town, the railroad
had to come. Then tent and tabernacle.
New trees planted. Cottages and gravel
paths laid out under maple, hickory,
and oak. The summer people came
and stayed the winter. The townsfolk
sang late, late into the night. Wars came.
Peace followed. Hard times and times
of plenty. More wars. More peace.

Now here we are — and who
will follow us? A song
cannot remain the same,
lest it die. Even the moon
must wax and wane. Tonight
we’ll sing old songs
so new songs might take flight.

Featured image Dietmar Rabich / Wikimedia Commons / “Dülmen, Naturschutzgebiet -Am Enteborn- — 2014 — 0202” / CC BY-SA 4.0

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.

After the flash
the shock
the fury
a vast and beautiful darkness
a wing-ed silence
that has fluttered now and then
at the corner of my eye
then flown away
leaving me
to bear the bitter jangle of my lot.

feel my pain feel my pain
my own mother don’t give a damn
I got money on my mind
and I ain’t got the time
tryin’ a nickel and a dime
just to make a rhyme

I always was a sensitive boy
Big Mike: stone trap rapper
straight out of Ferguson.
writing lyrics on scraps of paper
the way they came into my head
and storing them in a jar
at my grandma’s house.

Don’t move me, don’t move me
let me lie here where I fell
on the cold hard ground
let the sun burn my flesh.
let the birds drink my blood.
this is where I’m from.

when the sun goes down
on my side of town
well you in trouble now
devil get up off my back
break it down bag it up
feel my pain
feel my pain

How peaceful to be
as big as the sky
but who knew such peace
could only come to me this way?
a walk down the street
a pack of cigarillos
I took to calm my nerves
I heard that god don’t make mistakes
and one day the whole world
is gonna’ know my name.

feel my pain
feel my pain.
feel my pain
feel my pain.

Featured image Susanne Nilsson, CC BY-SA 2.0, 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.

My sister and I always dreamed of flying
Like Icarus with his wings of wax
Watching birds from windows built by Atlas’ folly as we stitched the seams of industry
Industry
We bled for industry in our American Tower of Babel.
It ends exactly the same.
Far off places, foreign tongues. Bodies lining the ground

Man’s ambition, their foolish mission, to take this nation’s new young daughters
Early in the morning till late at night – packed and herded to our stations like animals led to slaughter.
For iron and steam fueled by a million different tongues. Coal and cloth forged by a million different hands.
For garments of our modern age – our Brave New World that has such people in it – that we couldn’t even afford.
How it all burns so quickly.
How we burn.

We blazed on New York’s streets just the year before – sisters side by side, calling for fair pay, and workers’ rights.
Cassandra crying in the night.
Now the fires of hell rise higher. Higher than the 7th floor. Higher than the ladders could reach.
Smoke fills our lungs. The sky is so clear.
Sister, I’m scared.
Sister, I don’t want to die.
Sister, hold me as we fall
As we fly.

Featured image National Museum of the U.S. Navy, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons