Content warning for explicit language and examples of violence.
henry 7. reneau, jr.
Obama Reads the Newspaper #1
The front page reports/:
“Safer to Be Deployed to a Military Base in War Torn Region
Than Survive on East Oakland Streets”
His country had been at war with someone else
for as long as he could remember
They had gotten used to it
Right next to this is news of another killing spree
with a photo of police in body armor carrying
assault rifles herding children from a school
The president’s gaze
hovers with indifference
over the high school photo
of a black teen shot 16 times by the police
to dive with great relish into the commonplace appalling
/: a thirty-year old born-again Christian fundamentalist
seals the tortured and strangled body of a six-year old girl
in a Samsonite suitcase and tosses her body into a reservoir
The child’s name is omitted/: until relatives can be notified
The killer’s photo/: a self-righteous smile in status quo suit and tie
but a shortage of known facts
obscured by guest expert speculation and corporate media bias
and it’s no use counting
the clickety-clack abacus of murdered black youth
a sum too exponential year in and year out
the incarcerated
or demonized stripped of their worth
by the crude ignorance of die-nigger-ation
They see the corruption
and smell the sulfur
But we’ve gotten used to the post-racial propaganda
and the syncopated chain-gang arithmetic of violence
the gravitational expendability of children
henry 7. reneau, jr. writes words of conflagration to awaken the world ablaze, an inferno of free verse illuminated by his affinity for disobedience, is the spontaneous combustion that blazes from his heart, phoenix-fluxed red & gold, like a discharged bullet that commits a felony every day, exploding through change is gonna come to implement the fire next time. He is the author of the poetry collection, freedomland blues (Transcendent Zero Press) and the e-chapbook, physiography of the fittest (Kind of a Hurricane Press), now available from their respective publishers. Additionally, his collection, The Book Of Blue(s) : Tryin’ To Make A Dollar Outta’ Fifteen Cents, was a finalist for the 2018 Digging Press Chapbook Series. His work is published in Superstition Review, TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, Poets Reading the News and Rigorous. His work has also been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.
