The Last Will & Testament of the United States of America: Poetry

THIS COLLECTION OF POEMS conveys my anger and sadness over the current state of America-black, brown, yellow, red, white, and blue. On May 25, 2020-Memorial Day-a white woman named Amy Cooper walked her dog without a required leash in an area of Central Park known as the Ramble, and Christian Cooper, a peaceful, bird watching black man, asked her to leash her dog. The legacy of slavery writ-large in the astounding fact they had the same surname. Amy responded by calling 911 to say that an African-American man was threatening her and her dog. Christian calmly recorded the incident. (Imagine what might have happened if he hadn’t.) The video went viral and provided a painful reminder of the tradition of white women falsely accusing black men of a crime. Later that night, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a black man named George Floyd, who was not resisting arrest, was pressed face down into the pavement with a knee to his neck for seven minutes and 46 seconds-seven minutes and 46 seconds-by white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Floyd died as he narrated his own death. I can’t breathe. Protests over Floyd’s killing raged in cities across America for days, weeks…forever? On July 17, John Lewis, civil rights icon and Georgia Congressman, died from pancreatic cancer, and a few days before he passed, he wrote an essay to be released on the day of his funeral. On July 30, it ran in The New York Times. In his essay, Lewis wrote: When you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something. The Last Will & Testament of the United States of America is the poet’s way of saying and doing something.