“Our Times”: The Writers' Spotlight

“Our Times”

Arkansas is as bright a white

As freshly brushed teeth

That only the bright people have.

The streets and buildings are white

as new snow,

But the injustice is old

as buried bones.

Our bones.

The dark soil beneath

tries to gasp for air,

To breathe,

But the pale frost stifles it.

Nowhere in the light

Can the shadows dance

Along the walls

And down the street.

Their street.

Long ago,

Blood dark and red

Stained the white fields

Of cotton, fresh for the picking.

The light figures stood over

Those brown as the cotton stalks,

Their scalding, white rays

Searing across their backs

In one cruel crack.

Our backs.

They promised change.

A twilight

where light and dark could exist

Simultaneously.

But their vows are thin.

Thin as the glass windows

At the church

That bright lies

shine through

Like the eternal sun.

Their lies.

Perhaps one day

This twilight could

Become substantial,

Not just for white and black

But every color

To ever exist.

Red and yellow and orange

Blue and green,

All reveling in the sky

Like clouds at sunset.

Alas, for now,

That dream vanishes

Over the hill,

Bright summers gone,

And the winter chill

Returns, to hold

Lives once warm

In their icy grip.

Our lives.

-Jamison Cloyd

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