ChickenBones: A Journal

for Literary & Artistic African-American Themes

   

Home   (Books, DVDs, Music)  

  www.nathanielturner.com

Mammy Barbara once gave / Baby George a star-

Spanked napkin to wipe / His brow. She forgot / The offices of toilet tissue

 

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Books by Jerry W. Ward  Jr.

Trouble the Water (1997) / Black Southern Voices (1992) / The Richard Wright Encyclopedia (2008)  / The Katrina Papers

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Blue Voices for the Fourth of July

By Jerry W. Ward, Jr.

 

The Fourth of July, Frederick,

Isn’t a what but a fifth —

A bottle of dreadful freedom.

And sometimes, Frederick,

It is the baptism of greed.

 

Gluttony ate its declaration of independence,

An act of national security.

 

Once in a museum of eracism,

I epiphanied, went unblind.

Then I saw a billionaire

So dumb he thought

Iron maidens of pride are tanning beds.

 

Mammy Barbara once gave

Baby George a star-

Spanked napkin to wipe

His brow. She forgot

The offices of toilet tissue.

He forgot the remorse of toilets,

The envy of tissues.

 

Seven’s the color

Of your lover’s face

When too old to dream

You let lust go last,

The blue, the white, the red

Muscles ejaculating mess/

Ages for that world.

Black comes over all.

 

You so bad

We hear you write

 

Wrath with a bomb.

 

Frederick, why did not you,

Asserting the manhood of the slave,

Announce the sloth of slavers

Harbored fecal contagion?

posted 8 July 2007

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The Katrina Papers, by Jerry W. Ward, Jr. $18.95  /  The Richard Wright Encyclopedia (2008)

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The White Masters of the World

From The World and Africa, 1965

By W. E. B. Du Bois

W. E. B. Du Bois’ Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization (Fletcher)

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Ancient African Nations

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Negro Digest / Black World

Browse all issues

1950        1960        1965        1970        1975        1980        1985        1990        1995        2000 ____ 2005        

Enjoy!

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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan  /  The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll  /  Only a Pawn in Their Game

Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for Slavery

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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg

The Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804  / January 1, 1804 — The Founding of Haiti 

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updated 19 July 2011

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