by Emma Carr

Untitled

by Rita Dee Peters

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The Scottsboro Boys

by Chelsea Ensley

In 1931, nine African‒American boys were forced off a train and arrested in Scottsboro, Alabama for allegedly raping two white females. While evidence proved their innocence, these young men underwent various trials and suffered many months in jail, experiencing separation from their families, as well as emotional and physical persecution.

The Prison

He runs his fingers across the rusted bars He never understood how he ended up here He only remembers pointing fingers

A tethered rope digging into his arms And loud screams An echo now

Those innocent girls. Who do you think you are?

He misses his mother the most Her hands thick and calloused Black like his own

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Her singing in the mornings Low and deep How it rumbled under the dirty floor And crept up the newspaper walls

He wondered if he’d ever see her again Hear her familiar thunder

He imagines her, now, tearing down those bars She would reach in and cradle him up Carry him home Singing

But her hands Black like his own Can’t free him

The Dream

My dreams wake me up at night Before they brought me here I never had dreams Or at least any worth remembering

My nightly journeys take me to places I remember fondly The smells from my mother’s kitchen A small wooden room lined with yellow bowls Etched with blue flowers

We never ate from them They only sat and watched us My mother washed them each week And placed them gently back where they belonged I asked her once why we never ate from those bowls She said they were too pretty That they deserved better

I would give anything to see them now To reach out and touch them Just to hear her scream “No Roy!” And pinch the skin under my arm She would forgive me Like always That I knew She loved too much

Weeks after they decided they would take our lives I got a letter from my sister Our mother had broken all of those bowls I imagine the soles of her feet Bare and bloodied

She stands amongst the yellow chips and bright blue flowers and weeps for me dreaming of a world where I too deserve better

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The God Fairy

I heard every man’s last word before I carried his hot and lifeless body away. That’s the job they give me, to haul the electrocuted prisoners to the incinerator.

Before death, every one of them prayed to my God. They apologized for their wrongs and asked to be let through the pearly gates.

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