BLACK Above Ground

This Is The World

By William Murphy

Society punishes me for who I am

But I am clay,

Molded to be rewarded

With pats on the head like an animal

Made to devour netted hoops

And football fields like a cannibal

For the money is candlelight

To the truths of my being

I want to reverse my complexion

Because one simple mistake,

Could mean a bullet flying in my chest’s direction

My soul is charcoal

But the hue of glass is deemed as perfection

I am… the prison of perfection,

And victim of flags and presidential election

My intellectual capabilities in question

Spiraling my innocent heart into depression...

I was meant to be dangerous!

Cold blooded street killa till gentrified change us

Momma broken and daddy crackin’, ain't nothin but hang us

Hang us from the pipes of poverty,

The whips of sorrow and broke society

America's priority, but the murderers die in me

I, rest in power but the pieces break me

Glass and shaking

Voice cracks, till the bullets break me

I'm angry black man, but I'm only sixteen

Still I rise and watch deaths go unseen

I, live to be rich, but what's rich but a dream?

I see the gravel in the silky smooth

Of turmoil’s leaves

The cries of shadows

In black and white scenes

Fact is my only prayer

is more bread in the pantries!

Or, more blood on the leaves

You, who are you but a witness of villainous crimes?

I slept my hunger in church parking lots

You ain't feelin me, Clyde!

I'm a miracle survived,

Blackness is a curse, and it hurts ‘cause it wasn't meant to be dyed

The melanins curse when the niggas are under fire!

I seek refuge in black and white but the blue is what shines

Ain't no justice, it's just us, in these criminal times!

You? You ain't never felt this!

Fear of police at 6 years old, I was taught ‘fore the dime

The praise of the hustle and drugs glory

The syringes and whites tellin’ the story of euphoria

You can't offer me that

I praise life, but the fact is, I can't afford that

And ghosts ain't holy

Praise? I can't afford that!

I see bodies and looters; the deads beaten bad

No role models, Lucifer chooses to strip you of dads

I'm a monster, I'm thrillas, zombies, I live to see death

I'm a soul stolen, taken, but it ain't called theft

My opinion forever questioned

My truth always neglected

My culture is disrespected

My wants, and needs, to be neglected

My love to be rejected,

It's all to be expected...

My death…. To be…. Accepted

Untitled by Chesney Jackson

No One Killed Me America Did

By keif Hamilton

A bright light that guided hope in my heart

Is now vacant

Optimism was yanked out my body by the smell of meat rotting in winter

The defeat is so prevalent that I find myself just leaving the splinters

That are stuck, from years of meticulous mistreatment

This society has stabbed me so much that blood doesn’t gush

it just clots under my skin that is fragment of sin because I need saving

Prejudice is shaving my flesh off my bones and serving it to snow colored men

who bleed under sunlight

Ben Chapman bruised me with his bat it felt like being whipped on a sunny day in the Arctic

The slump in my shoulders and step is caused by walking on the soil of a land that I have never survived on

I am shot

Everyday, every hour, every minute, every second, though now it feels like nothing because my people have become numb to being mishandled

Joshua John Ward pushed me deeper and deeper into the water,

But my mind was too weak to tell my body to scream

Sometimes I ponder, why do I, waste my time, waiting on the enlightenment wave to come onto America’s shoreline, because I charge this land with rape and murder as a crime, I wear a white collar and don’t make a dime, then my people just sit and whine, don’t do anything about how at the frontline, it is a cotton colored mime controlling the grapevine, I believe that it is time, for this place to be redesigned, because Thomas Jefferson did not have someone like me in mind

I have been blended by the south and was sipped out of by the north

It is sometimes sickening knowing what has happened and that nothing has changed

But the worst part about it is that stone can only be broken because it is set

All I want to understand now, is how does it feel to know that you, America, eradicated a girl who just wanted you to love her

artwork by Ayana Abdullah

If Edgehill Could Talk

After If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin

by Alora young

If Edgehill could talk

you'd see that she who birthed these streets was a black woman.

She's got child bearing hips

and stretch marks

and scars-

She calls them all tiger stripes.

Her dress is a mosaic of fractal glass,

made of different shade shards of fractured past

that highways busted open—

I've heard em say that pain looks "good" on Her.

if Edgehill could talk

She would say that every bluegrass song

was plucked on the vertebrae of a black man, whose style we steal

whose name we forget.

His bones hummed deep with that Lawry bass

and His city stole his songs

to spite his face

and DeFord Bailey's legacy has been erased

because the camera of history

glances right past Us.

Edgehill loves to jive

and She loves to wop

and She dances in honor of the children

She lost when Nashville forgot

Their names,

Their voice,

when a thriving black village faded into gunshots and white noise

because that is Edgehill’s legacy,

forgetting who was really there

for some tragic new age fantasy.

Edgehill was Currie's Hill

was Meridian’s Hill

was slave country.

She raised artists, like William Edmondson, who were acclaimed internationally.

A road bears His name, but who knows His story?

Edgehill knows.

The gory truth is the plantations that surround Us have shaped Black lives for centuries.

for most of U.S. history Black people had to be the state's enemies because the letter of the law

led Us right back to hell,

these laws left us constrained and the books

have been amended

but some things never change—

that's why in Tennessee private prisons

are at an all time high.

no matter what shade of chains You wear

slavery has yet to die.

the plantations that surround Us, well,

they just go by different names

and when Edgehill speaks

We don't listen.

not anymore.

it's easier to let children suffer

when They're from places we abhor.

We didn't listen when She told us

urban renewal was just a thinly veiled way to erase black history,

to make way for white supremacy.

We didn't listen when She said

that Black people will always

be forgotten by Their legacy.

We didn't listen when She said that

the memories that line these streets don't show the bass that ricochets through the dark;

You wouldn't recognize Her melody if Edgehill could talk,

if Edgehill could tell You how Her bosom held the beat of Nashville's Black history.

would You still just see the misery?

would You see the way a new age white wave stands in the same old place?

would You see how our culture is beaten into disgrace?

this is no ordinary mortuary—

Edgehill’s legacy is buried beneath

boutiques and coffee shops.

mountains of Her history

were plowed through by I-40

and Her body is underground with Us.

My halls are full of false prophets.

My head is full of false promises.

and My classroom looks like the textbooks

because They will always

always

try to keep Edgehill silent.

Artwork by Jacob Jonson

Excuse Me

by Madison Taylor

Hey,

On my head lies a chameleon

Wild and free,

And it ain't nothin wrong with it

I just let it be

Moving to its own rhythm,

It holds my soul

It goes up and down,

Interlocking in however it can manage,

Bouncing

Endlessly

Embracing the sun that made it and the gods that aid it,

Silent, electric

Lazy, in love

Heat calms

Water delights

Strand by strand, together as one

No,

I do not hold your personal petting zoo.

What I hold is my soul,

My property

...

Hello!

Excuse me,

I said it holds

My soul

Are you listening?

This on my head

This chameleon

This masterpiece

This

Hair

My property,

My soul

Moves at its own pace

So,

I ask of you,

Please!

Don't touch my property.

Artwork by Ariel Harris