The Newark Riots ~ 50 Years Later

This week marks the 50th anniversary of a very sad time – the Newark riots. I remember them well. There was a curfew, and when I looked out our apartment window – National Guardsmen rode by in a jeep with rifles leaning against their chests. I was nowhere near the terror-stricken interior but inhaled the tension. This was my home city, and I was 14 years old. I wrote these tanka poems in hindsight and they were published by Modern English Tanka Press in 2009, 40 years after the fact. Newark still suffers:

 ~

forty years

after the riots

three students slain

“no apparent cause”

again, this blistering heat

~

born to love

born to hunt

we do what we do…

all the songs all the poems

nothing changes this

~

coming in on
a soft summer breeze
tickling my necking
and dropping down low —
this sadness for what

 ~

warm nights

I undress by an open

window   wondering

what is freely given

               freely taken

 ~

© Andrea Grillo