Wilderness House Literary Review

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Welcome to the 59th issue (Volume 15, no 3) of the Wilderness House Literary Review. WHLR is a result of the collaboration between a group of poets and writers who call themselves the Bagel Bards.

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Table of Contents

Opine
Search
Art
Fiction

Essays
Poetry
Review
Cumulative Index

Opine

Black Lives Do Matter.

All lives matter, that’s true, but in the USA, at least, black lives have mattered less to law enforcement personnel than white lives. We have systemic racism in America, leftover from the antebellum era where slaves of African descent were valued as 3/5 of a human for census purposes but could not vote. Almost every American male of color has experienced this when stopped for speeding or broken tail light. It’s a vicious feedback loop. A dark-skinned person is stopped and treated with suspicion. Why? Because whenever a policeman pulls over a person of color, they act paranoid, as if they are guilty of something, so the cop treats them as guilty. Of course, that only increases the paranoia on the part of the person who has been stopped. If the person being stopped is paranoid enough, they may get out and run as fast as they can to get away from a very real (or perceived) threat, in which case they risk being shot in the back.

In 2008, Marsha Russell began writing poems documenting each abusive case of a black man or woman being killed or poorly treated in the extreme. This September Wilderness House Press published, “This is why we kneel.” We hope that this slim volume of poems triggers a dialogue that, somehow, begins to heal this problem. We are not born racists; we learn it. We hope that this volume explains to a mostly white audience why people of color are scared and, perhaps, change their behavior. See also John Krieg below in essays.

Don't forget to take a look at Poplar Hill by Stephen Ramey Glines in e-book or on Amazon for hardback. It's super cheap on Amazon.