Vox Populi
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Michael Simms: America
Beside the highway outside McKeesport PA
a state trooper has pulled over a black man
who leans against his rusty Ford
palms flat, feet apart
assuming the position
as we say in America
The smokey in his broad brimmed hat
and menacing chin strap
which is leather, like the leather of his boots
and belt and holster, wears his hat
low, his face in shadow
Beside us, the Monongahela River
quickens, making its way
through abandoned pastures
and ruined river towns
on its way to the Ohio
As the smokey rummages through
the car, the man shrinks in his clothes,
catches my eye, then looks down
ashamed. What’s he done? I wonder
What’s the trooper done?
What have I done,
what have I ever done
but look away / up the road
toward the beautiful Laurel Highlands
hidden in the white mist of America?
~~~~
Michael Simms is the founder and editor of Vox Populi. His publications include poetry, essays and speculative novels. In 2011 the State Legislature of Pennsylvania awarded him with a Certificate of Recognition for his service to the arts.
Copyright Michael Simms. From Strange Meadowlark (Ragged Sky, 2023). First published in 2023 by ONE ART. Republished In the anthology In Sheep’s Clothing: The Idolatry of White Christian Nationalism edited by George Yancy and Bill Bywater (Roman & Littlefield, 2024).
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oof! Gut punch…
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A great poem, Michael. Thanks so much. It has taken me, a Black woman with some age on me, a long time to respond. What, for a White person, might be the proper way–beyond writing such a poem and publishing it–to fight the chronic dehumanization of Black people? What should any of us do in the moment in response to the dehumanization of anyone?
An officer’s gun has been turned on me three times over the years, and once in our own house, in 2010. My husband is still angry that it took George Floyd’s murder in 2020 for me to tell him what happened in our mud room that night. Had I informed him even the next day (I didn’t want to ruin his joyful birthday celebration), he would have sued our city. After Floyd’s murder, I phoned our police department to report, albeit belatedly, the 2010 police incident, as well as the time two White men threw rocks at my car and me the Monday following the “Unite the Right” rally of August 11, 2017. I was within two miles of our house, returning home from the train station. However wrongly, however unwisely, all I thought at those times was I didn’t want my husband harmed for defending my honor. I’ve had to rethink a lot of things. Commitment to justice could mean death.
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Powerful narratives, Desne, thank you. My heroes are the men and women, most of them Black, who marched and protested in the 1950s and 60s. Sadly, it seems we have returned to those times. Perhaps we never left them.
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“They’ll see how beautiful I am…” (Langston Hughes poem, “I, Too [Sing America]”) was our hope. We now see how wrong we were to believe that ‘being good’ or ‘being twice as good’ (as I was taught in the 1950s and 60s), would be enough. We need to develop new strategies for this present moment. Discouragement is a useful tool of the devil. It can paralyze people who don’t realize that we’re being played. I’m glad my parents are dead. They would be pissed.
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Great poem Michael! Mary M.
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Thanks, Mary!
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I’m afraid we have all looked away too often, relieved it wasn’t us, not aware it could be us the next time. What a powerful poem!
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Thanks, Mandy. Yes, next time it could be us. Fascism is cunning and insidious.
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Yes. Tables turn. Look at the Afrikaner “refugees”.
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Yes, tables turn.
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A powerful poem, Mike. Thanks for writing and posting it.
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Thanks, Andrea!
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Thank you, Michael, for inviting us all to think how we all have looked away. Again and again. Thank you for this poem — for your courage. Marty Williams says it so well: that “white mist” has become a storm we must resist…
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Thank you, Laure-Anne.
M
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I’m going to be thinking about this for some time. The frame is so simple, so stark, and captures so much.
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Thank you, John. I admire the political work you are doing in your elected office.
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Wow! Powerful, Michael. White mists are what we get when we “look away.” “Mists” — such a perfect term, leather — so ominous. Thanks so much. I read it while listening to an NPR profile of freedom fighter Fannie Lou Hamer and contemplating the depths of Jim Crow depravity and good old boys on the ascendance.
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Germany 1935
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Thank you for the beauty AND the brutal honesty of this poem, Michael! Wow.
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Thanks, Meg.
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Now they stopped supervising the police. It is Nazi Germany all over. I saw it coming (since I know the signs) in 2014 and I was told it could never happen in the US of A. Terrific poem, Michael.
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Like you, I wish the poem wasn’t necessary, my friend.
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Masterful, Michael!
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Thank you, Claire!
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And that “white mist” has become a storm we must resist. Thanks, Michael.
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Exactly!
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Thank you Michael for noticing, reflecting and rendering in sharp relief the times we have all “looked away”. Kudos to the reader who caught the “Dixieland” reference. Important that we acknowledge our moments of complicity in this ongoing & still tragic history.
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I saw in the news today that Trump has issued an executive order declaring that only he has the authority to interpret the law and hire and fire government employees. Having neutralized Congress, he is the only power in the government. 1935 Germany.
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Yes, powerful and I suspect all of us have looked away, even those of us who think we don’t.
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Exactly.
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An oh so true poem, as your readers all say. And you have not looked away from the big picture injustices, many systemic; but perhaps at that one moment, you hoped to avoid connection with a roadside drama with its undertones of power and maybe race. I have too.
When I first read the poem I focused on your words: Look away, and thought of the song line …Look away, Dixieland.
But I was five miles from George Floyd’s death when it happened. And the brave young woman who filmed the atrocity cast light on murder by those with power. By not looking away she made a difference (though it did not save Mr. Floyd). I visited the spot a couple of weeks later, but looked away from what had happened, to view the thousands of wilted flowers, the slogans for peace and for violence, seven teddy bears. And much more. I was a tourist in my own land of devastation.
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We are now in a position of the nation being held and frisked at the mercy of a tyrant.
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Great poem of an unfortunate reality in our country.
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Thanks, Mike!
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Such a strong poem, resonates through my childhood in South Africa and the years I’ve lived in Israel. I know it by heart.
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Thanks, Noelle. I grew up in Texas during the 50s and 60s. Looking back on it, I’m baffled and horrified that one group of people could treat another group of people with such callousness. And the injustice continues today.
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Powerful poem!
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Thanks, Barbara.
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An eloquent restatement of the unfortunate reoccurrence.
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Thanks, Duggo!
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Ah, I assume it is a rhetorical question, Michael! But to answer it, you have done much more than to look away: you have looked and looked hard, you have witnessed and borne testimony, you have made an amazing forum for others to do so – vital and necessary work, for which, many thanks. And if there were moments of looking away, they are so, so human, and they are the moments that later made you look…
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Thanks, David.
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I second that
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