He’s, obviously, not a New Yorker,
riding trains 4 and 5 in the morning.
Trains packed with hoodie-crowned;
shuttered chocolate, mocha, peanut
butter, caramel, coffee-colored faces—
Lunch bucket UN—palpable power,
Grabbing their last Zs, before Shifts
Holding levers, running the city.
He, obviously, gets no coffee,
street snacks, scarves, gloves,
posters, CDs, DVDs, caps, T-shirts
from carts and stands tourists treasure;
Carts and stands powered by African, Asian,
Latin American, Caribbean, Middle Eastern labor…
Lord knows he’s never been
to bodegas named Ameer's,
or Branson’s juice bar,
or the Texas Star,
Tarboosh, Nanoosh,
Cafe One, Clove, Dig Inn,
or Peace Food—where
Workers from plundered countries
Toil—countries Boss Tweet dissed!
Eateries where workers break bread,
rub shoulders, swap stories: U.S. bases,
Blood-soaked “boots on the ground,” Coups,
Death squads, decomposing bodies, bullets,
Bombs, missiles chasing families from
smoldering homelands…“in harm’s way”
Tweet’s just a paper towel-tossing,
beetle-brained, feces-faced
Clown, giving cover to 1%
Pickpockets working the crowd—
Look for him in the sewer…
Days when all trains empty at
City Hall and Wall Street…
Raymond Nat Turner © 2018 All Rights Reserved
Our poet in residence, Raymond Nat Turner is an acclaimed poet and performing artist. You can find much more of his work at http://upsurgejazz.com.
The Democratic Party is in crisis—divided, broke, and struggling to counter Trump’s agenda despite growing public backlash. Internal battles over strategy and leadership have left the DNC paralyzed.
Zohran Mamdani’s upset over Andrew Cuomo in NYC’s mayoral primary has cracked the Democratic machine’s decades-long grip, proving grassroots organizing can muscle out billionaire financing and…
In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Oliver Baker. Baker is Assistant Professor of English and African American Studies…
"No kings and things (Of mobilized masses)" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
A recent report prepared by Garb Yaakov, a Professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, and published on The President & Fellows of Harvard College Dataverse website, has…
