by Matt Sedillo

Plato

In a cave

Shakespeare

At the Globe

Napoleon

On the Rhine

All roads

Lead to Rome

Jefferson

In his study

Alexander

Cried

Lincoln

Freed the slaves

And history

Would not lie

Washington

On the Delaware

Take time

To learn

Your forebears

They

Are you

Though

You

Are not

You are

Nowhere

Born

Of nothing

History

Is written

To keep

Its victims

Learn

To think

English

Swarthy horde

Barbarian at the gate

Even in insult

Color

Erased

From the soil

Roots

To be razed

You

Of burn codice

You

Without legacy

Skin

Without myth

Blood

Without legend

You bastard children

Never

Seem to learn

Your lesson

The academy

Is no game

Of call

And response

It is the smoke rising

Of burning village

Europe

More construct

Than continent

Less land mass

Than concept

More west

Than civilization

More land grab

Than destination

White

Something

I was taught

When I was young

I was not

A place

Where the census

Now tells me

To check

A box

Of Hispanic

Descent

Burned down the past

Now back for the rest

Claw

All that

Indigenous

From my chest

Born stateless

Heir to every injustice

Every pen

Every blade

Every cannon

Every burnt page

Born of 1846

Or was it 1538

1519

1492

Or of nothing

Of no one

The unsung ballad

Of history’s

Forgotten son

Tell me again

Who it is

That I am not

For some

Old world hardships

Crashed

Against new shores

Newfoundland

New Hampshire

New Jersey

New York

Plymouth Rock

For others

Pushed off

Turtle Island

Atzlan

Do not call this brown

Skin immigrant

Child of the sun

Son of the conquest

Mestizo blood

Born of the streets

Of South Seattle

Who draws his breath

From different winds

Learns the past

In a different skin

Do not tell him

In what native tongue

His song would best

Be sung

Do not tell me

Who I am

by Matt Sedillo

If a tree falls in the forest

And no one is there to hear it

Does it make a sound

If a ballot falls in a box

And no one knows

What they are voting for

Does it really count

What happens to a dream deferred

To justice deterred

To life

When it becomes impossible to live it

I don’t want to know

Because I want more than a vote

I want to be a participant

See

I want to live in a free country

A democracy

Where hate speech

Doesn’t pass for freedom

Where

No one has to turn to crime

To feed their children

If you were to put

A measure on a ballot

I would vote for democracy

I want the same things as anyone

And i want them for everyone

I want to live in a free country

A democracy

Not with over two million

Locked in cages

Or millions more

Pushed into the street

Where as Ferguson shows

You cant even surrender

To police

One nation

Under ghetto birds

And terror copters

Locking down children

At the border

Cutting off

Families

From their water

While cutting lunch programs

To drop bombs on Iraq

I dont want to live like that

I want to live in a free country

A democracy

What happens to a dream deferred

To justice deterred

To life

When it becomes impossible

To live it

If you don’t know who you are

You can never know your power

You dont know who you are

But you will soon find out

Let your voice be heard

And may it finally count

by Sampson Moore

there’s a glint from a grim corpse you can see as it slithers from the dark grave

in dire search to reprise a role played so long ago that yesterday forgets

its head ascends in silence to glimpse a life it longed to live

if only it owned the courage it had to borrow

if only it possessed the passion it desired to lend

to view a vantage of life it housed in wishes and journeyed to in dreams

its bitter poison willfully swallowed now exchanged for the savory saccharine

and what was long exhaled is breathed in

the dead, the gone, mine ancient carrion so bewildered, can only peer at future yesterdays

to see me smile wide enough to stretch the boundaries of a lifetime, from what was, to what will be, all with the gleam from the exquisite today