February 2022 Issue 24

Judy Ireland, Meryl Stratford, Michael Mackin O'Mara, Lenny DellaRocca, Editors

If you are poet, prophet, peace loving artist, tolerant, traditional or anarchistic, haiku or epic, and points in between; if your poems sing, shout, whisper, dance, scratch, tickle, trot or crawl;  if you value the humane treatment of every creature and the planet on which we dwell, SoFloPoJo seeks your best work.

Poets in this issue:

DEE ALLEN.    CLAIRE BATEMAN.    KRISTIN BOCK.    DESPY BOUTRIS.    RICK CAMPBELL.    SUSAN MICHELE CORONEL.    WILLIAM DeGENARO.    ROSEMARIE DOMBROWSKI.    JALEN EUTSEY.    MAURA FAULISE.    SCOTT FERRY.    LINDA NEMEC FOSTER.    EMILY FRANKLIN.    BECCA ROSE HALL.    LARA HENNENMANN.    JOYCE HIDA.    RUTH HOBERMAN.    PAUL HOSTOVSKY.     HALSEY HYER.    JUDY KABER.    JEFFREY LETTERLY.    LORRAINE HENRIE LINS.    EMI LOHMAN.    ANNIE MARHEFKA.    CATHERINE MAZODIER.    SALLY NAYLOR.   JEFF NEWBERRY.    ALLAN PETERSON.    henry 7. reneau jr.     BRUCE ROBINSON.    RICHARD RYAL.    ESTHER SADOF.    MICHAEL SALCMAN.    BETSY SHOLL.    KATE STRONG STADT.    DONNA VORREYER.     CAROL YOUNG.

Dee Allen

Greenwood Avenue

Whistle blew long
At 5:08am,
High-volume
Encouragement
For a full civilian
Army of hate to cross
Frisco train tracks to the North Side,
Object of their shared spite,

Machine-guns
Mounted on rooftops,
Bi-planes
Prowled the sky,
Ill-gotten guns
Toted on the ground.

It rained kerosene
That early morning hour,
Drenched everything
From emptied cans.
Lit torches
From racists did the rest.

Doomsday came
As immense flame
June 1, 1921

To Greenwood Avenue,
Thirty-five square blocks
Of Black prosperity--

Acme Brick Company,
Little Rose Beauty Parlor,
Booker T. Washington High School,
Mount Zion Baptist Church,
Dreamland Theatre,
Williams’ Confectionary,
Liberty Café,
The Tulsa Star,
The Oklahoma Sun,
Dunbar Grade School,
Stradford, Little Pullman,
Graysonia Hotels,
Caver’s Cleaners,
Blue Front Furniture,
S.D. Hooker & Company Clothing,
Mann’s Drug Shoppe,
Knights Of Pythias,
Odd Fellows, Masonic Lodges,
Hospitals, surgeons, dentists,
Barbers, jewellers, barristers,
Pool halls, speakeasies that sold
“Choc beer”, which bore a pale yellow
Grapefruit juice colour and less expensive
Than the usual homemade bathtub
Rotgut in South Side places,
Days of drinking to Blues,
Dancing to Jazz,
Showing off brand new
Satin dresses, strings of pearls,
Bowler hats, three-piece suits,
Fancy cars, solid red brick
Stately two-storey houses
Belonging to the affluent,
Self-reliant, self-made

City within a city
Gone in a day,
Thirty-five square blocks
Gone in a day,
Three-hundred upscale intelligent
Black lives gone in a day.

Why?

“Negro insurrection”—Rumours.
“White woman assaulted in an elevator”—Rumours.

Whites in Tulsa saw
An affront to their ways: Blacks
Had nicer cars, nicer homes,
Nicer trinkets, nicer clothes,
Better businesses and careers 
Than they. Middle-class, upper-class

Prosperity “they’re not supposed to have”--

Doomsday came 
As immense flame
June 1, 1921.
Envy destroys lived dreams.

W: Nat Turner Rebellion Anniversary 2021
(Inspired by the book The Burning by Tim Madigan).

Dee Allen is an African-Italian performance poet based in Oakland, California. Active on creative writing & Spoken Word since the early 1990s. Author of 7 books--Boneyard, Unwritten Law, Stormwater, Skeletal Black (all from POOR Press), \Elohi Unitsi (Conviction 2 Change Publishing) and coming in February 2022, Rusty Gallows Vagabond Books) and Plans (Nomadic Press)—and 43 anthology appearances under his figurative belt so far.

Consequence of Dust

How am I lonely in this thickness of spring? Rolling towards ourselves, day breaking in the rooftops. Then it was possible to do just one thing at a time. Such as simply to cry. Night, I sat watching as he rolled his tobacco and smoked it, car wheels hissing with rain. Do nothing.  Do nothing lightly. The way light fell through my water glass, shatter was just a matter of time.  As they say, or leaning.  But time is so lonely in its bungalow, its Astroturf doormat, ashtrays of brown glass. And so. A fish, a dark flicker in impossible water.  

I am earnest about the nature of light in the late afternoon forest. I am mad with air, and the trees make love through it.  Being a matter of politeness, he slid his hand down my ass.  We do not go walking. I popped Percocet every day in high school.  No, he said, that was me.  These impenetrable consequences of dusk.  Dust. This even. All April, up and down the sidewalks, our wistful misglances. These things we are learning slowly to undo. Whatever I say, I find it is only half the truth. I would never have kept the baby, unborn with salamander arms.  

I can say towards if I want to say towards. The shorn dog who even now runs through my neighbors’ lawn is never so fast as my bicycle.  Vanessa annabella -- finally free and likely to wander -- is sunning her wings on my forehead. A stone as it dries learns of dust. Must I make something of this? You etherized them, you pinned their hearts. Lacy, unnamed.  

Saturday, glittery with rain and it’s shoe puddles, not piss, on the bathroom floor. A festival of Dan, said Dan. Here again, not sleeping. I have meant to be shaving my legs for some time now. Dear God, we have a love of babies. The seeds, when crushed, a film of oil. I tasted that kiss for a whole box of mints. Alone with a flyswatter and a putrid smell.  Get out. Out of the corridor.  Now I like him all the more. I covet. I crave.  What do you want me to do?  And he told me. I think already he told me all I care to know.
​

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Consequence of Dust

How am I lonely in this thickness of spring? Rolling towards ourselves, day breaking in the rooftops. Then it was possible to do just one thing at a time. Such as simply to cry. Night, I sat watching as he rolled his tobacco and smoked it, car wheels hissing with rain. Do nothing.  Do nothing lightly. The way light fell through my water glass, shatter was just a matter of time.  As they say, or leaning.  But time is so lonely in its bungalow, its Astroturf doormat, ashtrays of brown glass. And so. A fish, a dark flicker in impossible water.  

I am earnest about the nature of light in the late afternoon forest. I am mad with air, and the trees make love through it.  Being a matter of politeness, he slid his hand down my ass.  We do not go walking. I popped Percocet every day in high school.  No, he said, that was me.  These impenetrable consequences of dusk.  Dust. This even. All April, up and down the sidewalks, our wistful misglances. These things we are learning slowly to undo. Whatever I say, I find it is only half the truth. I would never have kept the baby, unborn with salamander arms.  

I can say towards if I want to say towards. The shorn dog who even now runs through my neighbors’ lawn is never so fast as my bicycle.  Vanessa annabella -- finally free and likely to wander -- is sunning her wings on my forehead. A stone as it dries learns of dust. Must I make something of this? You etherized them, you pinned their hearts. Lacy, unnamed.  

Saturday, glittery with rain and it’s shoe puddles, not piss, on the bathroom floor. A festival of Dan, said Dan. Here again, not sleeping. I have meant to be shaving my legs for some time now. Dear God, we have a love of babies. The seeds, when crushed, a film of oil. I tasted that kiss for a whole box of mints. Alone with a flyswatter and a putrid smell.  Get out. Out of the corridor.  Now I like him all the more. I covet. I crave.  What do you want me to do?  And he told me. I think already he told me all I care to know.

​

Text fully justified. now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party. ​now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party. now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party. now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party. now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party. now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party. now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party. now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party. now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party. now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party. now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party. now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party. now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party. now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party. now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party.

here was a time when I was a horse that knew it was a horse. I was a horse for ten years in upstate New York during the 1930s. I had a few brothers who were wild and could not be tamed. Eventually, they were shot. Mr Moses, the farmer, had my brother boiled for glue. As it wcaneas, a horse has no feelings, and so I did not hold a grudge to the human though since coming to life as a human, I now fault Mr. Moses. I learned to hate. I hate what he did to my brother horses. But he's long dead and there is no undoing what he had done. So I try to forget my dead horse brothers. I met a woman last week who said she used to be maple tree in the 19th centaur. She lived in Mississippi along a tributary of the big river. She told me that among the events that made her life most living was when children built forts in her branches, and when birds of all kinds nested in them. Maureen, that is her name, said that one time an old trickster, she named him Philo, came and lived under her leaves. Each day he would go into town and snatch anything that sparkled in the sunlight. Then Philo would go about pretending the weird objects were from another star. Some called him a fortune teller. But he wasn't. Philo was bad man with bad intentions. One time I saw him showing a sparkling do-dad to a boy, and that boy up and vanished in plain sight. It was like the bright thing took him. So one windy night during a storm, I called my friend lightning down to visit Philo. I am not proud of it. I did not want to hurt anyone, not even the cruel Mr. Philo. But I could not abide him stealing children the way he done. I hope to find that boy some day, and who knows how many others, living a new life as an owl, or maybe an orange tree somewhere in Florida. Maybe one of them could be a stone warmed up by the sun, and cooled off by the stars. Who knows?

THIS IS A SCREEN SHOT.

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SCREEN SHOT

Radoslav Rochallyi

​Fly Away / Neglect / Matter of Time

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Radoslav Rochallyi is a poet, essayist, and interdisciplinary artist. He is the author of eight books of poetry. His work has been featured in Variant Literature Journal(North Carolina, USA: Variant Literature Inc.), Havik 2020: Homeward- The Las Positas College Journal of Arts and Literature(CA, USA: The Las Positas College), Cyber Smut (London, United Kingdom: Guts Publishing), Outside the Box ( Illinois, USA: Scars Publications), MAINTENANT 14-Contemporary Dada Art & Writing(New York, USA: Three Rooms Press)