I-70 Review


Writing and Art from the Middle and Beyond

Stan Banks

     Stan Banks is an Assistant Professor & Artist-In-Residence

At Avila University in Kansas City, Missouri.  His awards include The Langston Hughes Prize for Poetry and the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship/Grant.  His four books are Blue Beat Syncopation (2003), Rhythm and Guts (1992), Coming from a Funky Time and Place (1988), and On 10thAlley Way (1981). Stan Banks is an Assistant Professor & Artist-In-Residence

At Avila University in Kansas City, Missouri.  His awards include The Langston Hughes Prize for Poetry and the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship/Grant.  His four books are Blue Beat Syncopation (2003), Rhythm and Guts (1992), Coming from a Funky Time and Place (1988), and On 10thAlley Way (1981).



A  BARBEQUED  LIFE  (1967)                                                                                                                                     

     

                                         (For  My  Grandmother)                              


At   Georgia's  bootleg-beer  house

on  10th  and  Vine,  every  holiday

the  smell  of  sizzling  beef  and

its  juices  roasting  in  garlic,  onions

and  tomato  sauce  floated  through

10th ,  11th,  and  12th  streets


                         Georgia's  husband,  a  World  War  I

                         veteran  from  1917  to  1919,

                         grilled  in  the  backyard  showing  the  skills

                         he  learned  while  serving  in  France.


As  folks  woke  up  on  Vine  Street,

Georgia  already  would  be  boasting

with  her  bull-horn  voice,       

         “Y'all  can  steal  my  sauce,  

           but  if  I  run  upon  you,

           I'm  gonna  be  your  boss.”                              


                           Jay  Bone,  Georgia's  son,  set  up

                           his  four  piece  horn  section  early

                           so  the  fellas  could  eat  biscuits,  barbeque,  

                           and  practice  in  between  their  greasin'.


Six  Bits,  the  barber,  would  holler  back

from  his  next  door  porch,            

             “Georgia,  my  thick  hot-peppered  brisket  

               is  what  every  Vine  Street  heifer  needs                    

               when  I  fix  it.”

               

                           The  days  of   barbequing

                           freed   the  air  for  the  black  folks

                           of   Vine  Street  who  lived              

                           lives  hungry  for  

                           Jim  Crow  liberation.


For  the  whole  of   these  days

Georgia  and  Six  Bits  would  battle

for  barbeque  bragging  rights

playing  the  dozens  on  each  other's  momma


trying  to  come  up  

with  the  coolest  insult.  

                         

                          Georgia  always  got  the  last  lick,

                           “I  told  you  clowns  

                            once  you  taste  my  voodoo

                            hickory  barbeque

                            baby,  you'll  lose  your  damn  mind

                            and   beg  to  call  me,  divine.”


AFTER  KATRINA:  THE  BODIES  ARE  RISING

                      


Unjust  death  can  never  be  

                        contained  in  a  crypt.

Bodies  rising  tend  to  expose

                        the  truth  about  the  remains

                        of   Jim  Crow  days.

Atrocities  are  historic  in  Louisiana.

                        Ghosts  of  old  Creoles  

                        are  again  trying  to  speak:

“Where  have  y'all  been?”

“Why  did  y'all  leave  us?”


                       We  are  witnessing  the  

                       sins  of  the  last  century

as  mulattoes,  quadroons,  and  octoroons  rise.

Anti-Civil  Rights  Dixiecrats

                        never  wanted  anyone  to

                        bother  with  the  horrors    

that  lie  just  under  the  surface.     

How  many  times  will  America  allow

                         the  ugly  issue  of   skin  color

                         to  hemorrhage  in  our  hearts.


New   Orleans,  you've  always  been  a

                       showy  and  Jazz  mad  city.

                                           Please  “Satchmo”  come  back    

                                           and   jam  with  Wynton  Marsalis ⏤

                                           blow  the  life  back  from

                        smithereens  to  New  Orleans.

“Oh,  Susanna … don't  you  cry  for  me”

                        and  don't  ever  forget  Emmett  Till

                        beaten  so  savagely  his  momma  

                        didn't  know  him.

“I'm  going  to  Louisiana”

                        not  you,  Dred  Scott,  unless  you  go  back

                        as  a  slave  because  the  1857  Supreme

                        Court  decision  sealed  your  fate.

“With  my  banjo  on  my  knee.”

                         It's  time  America,  

                         the  bodies  are  rising.


THE  DEATH  OF  A  KC  JITTERBUG


                                                          (For My Father)


Poking  around  where  his

humiliated  body  dropped

             I  felt  a  double  freeze

             there  in  the  snow  

where  a  thick  puddle

of  his  blood  made  a

             dark  purple  design.

In  my  dreams

my  stomach  folds

              over  and  over  as

              his  body  curses  me

while  a  siren  roars

in  my  head.

                Five  shots  insulted  his  body ⏤

                two  in  his  upper  back,

                one  through  his  spine,

                one  in  his  left  shoulder,

                and  one  in  his  right  ear  to

                hollow  out  his  point  of  view.

Everytime  I  remember  

how  his  body  was  left

                perverted  in  the  

                Charlie  Parker  projects,

it's  the  beat,  the  slide,

the  skip,  the  hard  back-riff,

                 the  idea  of  his  death

                 that  won't  fade  away

and  like  Jazz  his

haunting  is  impromptu

Birthers:  A  Decayed  Reflection                                             


Logical  people  ask  is  

             a  lie  true  or  false

they  don't  relish  

            in  the  perversion  of  it.

Birthers  weren't  even  relieved

            after  forcing  President                    

Barack  Husan  Obama  to

            show  his  papers

as  in  the  early  centuries

            of  American  Slavery

when  Africans  were  forced

             to  show  their  papers  to  

pass  from  place  to  place.

            Birthers  have  always  been  obvious

attempting  to  hide  their  true  nature

           with  fake  outrage,  white  sheets  and

now  suits  and  ties,  business  dresses

           and  Supreme  Court  robes.

Birthers  used   to  rule  in  the  

          time  of  Plantation  owners    

who  cooked  up  schemes  to  

           forever  brand  and  lock  in

the  belief  that  dark  skin  equals

the  identity  of  a  slave

              who  is  eternally  alien.

Birthers  are  just  a  new  version  

              of  the  Ku  Klux  Klan  and  

Southern  Segregationists.               

               In  the  light  of  day  

when  a  lie  can  smell  

               as  rotten  as  it  is,

Birthers  don't  ever  want  to  die  

               because  maybe  they  know

that  Jesus  is  tan

              like  Barack  Obama.

DYSFUNCTIONING   BABY


                                                                           (Based  on  a  true  event)

                                                                                                                       

In  the  first  few  seconds

                                          

                                        of   his  innocent  life,


his  mother  tried  several  times  to


                                        flush  him  down  a  McDonald's  toilet,


but  the  baby  fought  against  the  


                                        surge  of  filthy  rushing  water.

                                                                                     

Blood,  urine,  tears,  feces  and    


                                        pieces  of  umbilical  cord


streamed  by  his  puny  body,


                                        but  he  held  on  tight  with  a  grace  


few  adults  find  in  a  lifetime  and


                                        learned  one  of  the  profound  lessons


of  this  lowly  existence  --


                                        when  you're  born  in  crap,     


you  can  either  sink  willingly


                                        or  swim  against  the  tide.