February 23
Ray McNiece
register for the Zoom reading at:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMkduGurzsvGtDCkc96COWvHI9OSRr7ZB4b
Ray McNiece
register for the Zoom reading at:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMkduGurzsvGtDCkc96COWvHI9OSRr7ZB4b
RAY MCNIECE is the author of nine books of poems and monologues, most recently Love Song for Cleveland, a collaboration with photographer Tim Lachina. The Orland Sentinel, reporting on Ray’s solo theater piece : “Us—Talking Across America” at the Fringe Festival called him a “modern day descendant of Wood Guthrie. He has a way with words and a wry sense of humor.” He toured Russia with Yevgeny Yevtushenko, appear on Good Morning, Russia and performed at the Moscow Polytech, the Russia Poets Hall of Fame, where he was dubbed “the American Mayakovski.” He has toured Italy twice with Lawrence Ferlinghetti. He is the three-time Cleveland Haiku Slam Champion.
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O Say Can You See
O say can you see this country free of bigotry, hostility, incivility from sea to shining tv? The tribes are picking up sides from Ferguson to Charlotte from Minneapolis to Cleveland and there’s nowhere left to hide for the children of the dream walking hand in hand down the black and white wound running across this land. What’s wrong with this picture? Can you find the human being beaten on this screen? Being beaten on that screen? He deserved it. “Payback happens.” What goes around, comes around, said the eye for an eye blind men. But the rioting is on the wall. “Mr. President, you have a call on the white courtesy phone.” It’s the BLANKS’ fault. The BLANKS started it. You know how they are. They don’t really belong here. So we sell ourselves on talk shows like bugs shaken in a jar. And the finger of blame points around in an angry trigger circle. We’re all living in the same hood now, buying into Babylonian hype. Mad. Ave. went to bed with Holly Would and raised a little family of stereotypes. Say, hey can you see somebody who looks just like me, somebody who looks just like you, peering out from the leaves of our family tree rooted in Mother Africa? We are the children of the dream who wandered our separate ways along time gone, gathered together here again today. Remember? Can we call ourselves brothers and sisters? What color was the hand Cain raised against Abel after it fell? How will we ever wipe the slate clean when the powers that be sell us whitewash and blackball so we can paint ourselves into our own corners, the mirrors of our monsters? Can you see the eyes of a sister, a brother, a mother, a father behind the masks of your worst nightmares? O say can you see through the lies that we are not us? That we are us versus? And where is Justice? Or is it just us? We are the children of the dream wandering the desert of America through the smokescreen from the fire next time come home, walking hand in hand down the black and white wound running across this land healed over with each step together and together again. O say can you see the person walking next to you now? |
Launched by poets Mark Flanigan and Jim Palmarini in 2014, Word of Mouth was inspired by the late Cincinnati poet Aralee Strange. Poets of all stripes are welcome to show up, listen, and mouth off.