Welcome to the MLK edition of Poetry Friday Roundup!

Hello, and Happy Poetry Friday! Roundup is HERE!! I'm thrilled YOU are here to share it.

In honor of MLK Day, and because I've still got the movie SELMA on my mind, I'm sharing today from Cybils Finalist VOICES FROM THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON, Poems by J. Patrick Lewis and George Ella Lyon

One of my favorite voices in the book is a fictional character penned by J. Patrick Lewis:

Raymond Jarvis, 25
B.A. Degree in Business Administration
Out-of-Work Store Clerk
Amarillo, Texas

THE WATCH

I watch my business administration degree
     secure a place for me in the unemployment line.

I watch my mother worry that her
     math-star son struggles to earn a living.

I watch the register fill
     till my boss's magic trick makes all
     the "petty cash" disappear.

I watch my paycheck shrink
     ten dollars a week till they fire me
     "for offending a lady in hardware, boy."

I watch my blister
      of a bungalow get splat-tattooed
     with a red, white, and blue swastika.

I watch the window
     and the rock sailing through the window
     with a promise.

I watch the moon
     as if the moon had any answers,
     her face hidden in a disgrace of clouds.

I watch my no-account savings account
     buy a cup of coffee and a heap of humiliation,
     and you ask me why I'm going to the March?

- J. Patrick Lewis
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...and I also love this imagined voice from George Ella Lyon, whom, thrill of thrills, I got to meet this past November at NCTE!:

HALLEY LIZA CLEMONS
30, Hotel Maid
Nashville, Tennessee

A pause between speakers
and a man white as a pillowslip

asks where I came from,
how I go there. I say

Nashville, Tennessee. I took
a bus. That satisfies him.

He's from Kentucky. He drove.

But it would be truer to say
somebody sang me here.

If it wasn't for some old
woman, one of my greats,

humming, working
dark to dark, never giving

up, I wouldn't even be. She
kept the song of our blood

going. She carried me here.

- George Ella Lyon
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and finally, a poem I found in Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech delivered August 28, 1963, Washington, DC. I wrote it in the form of a letter, since he liked letters. All the words appear in order, kind of like blackout poetry. Fun!

Dear Martin,

Today injustice

still lives

in the corners

of our republic.

Yes, freedom

promises

brotherhood.

Equality

is awakening

whirlwinds

of thirst.

Fresh storms

rise up

on the red hills,

heat exalted,

hope jangling

into faith –

we join hands,

sing,

          at last.

- Irene Latham

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