Readings from the Austin Project 20th Anniversary Celebration
by Amanda Johnston
NOTE
The Austin serial bombings occurred between March 2 and March 22, 2018, in Central Texas. Five package bombs exploded, killing two people, and injuring another five. The initial attacks were in predominately Black and Brown neighborhoods. Law enforcement was slow to identify the attacks as racially motivated domestic terrorism. This split the community as to whether there was a larger active threat or if these were isolated incidents.
The poems “It Begins,” “Two Americas,” “How Do I Explain,” “untitled,” “13 Ways of Looking At,” and “after hitting my head on a lovely vaulted ceiling at a writing retreat” are poems from my manuscript in progress titled Active Threat.
The remaining poems are from my collection Another Way to Say Enter.
It Begins
March 2, 2018, the first package bomb detonates in Pflugerville, Texas
What does a bomb sound like when everything is exploding?
The coffee pot drips into mourning with the eerie buzz
of cars on the verge of collision. The world and its infinite
brink of life and breath, in and out, small bursts of the day-to-day.
And then a loud note cuts through a quiet street
announcing a terror, that has always been,
is awake and hungry.
Two Americas
A friend says online shopping is great!
You come home and there are packages
waiting for you like little gifts.
You should do it.
You deserve it.
It’s so much fun!
My daughter is afraid to open the door.
I check the front yard for tripwire, mumble
a little prayer– take me, take me.
How Do I Explain
A coworker sees me crying at the copier. I don’t know how to explain, so I don’t. She asks if I like poetry and says there is a poet I should check out named Maya Ange –
I go deaf and close my eyes relying on the machine in front of me to continue its business
and hold me up with the flow of industry and all that shows I have value.
A boy, this time, opened a box in his kitchen with his mother.
A world stops. The machine goes on.
untitled
for Shamika Wilson, mother of Draylon Mason
and one day the sky opens and a voice says now and after decades of church on sunday bible study on wednesday grace and faith over every meal and heads bowed you look up and scream
no
and it is done the hand that hovers eternally points its long finger and touches the body and the armor wrapped with faith wrapped with prayer wrapped in the blood now soaked in loss and grieving goes quiet so quiet you could fool yourself into thinking it is all a dream
13 Ways of Looking At
no put the pen
down not this time
refuse the devil
his advocate
keep your red cheek
pulsing forward
stay on this page
until it ruins
your expectation
of resolution and
post-discomfort relief
feel it look
smell your wound
after hitting my head on a lovely vaulted ceiling at a writing retreat
unused to the architecture i made a note of it
so beautiful and sharp its lines i made a note
to duck and watch my head even said it out loud
to be sure i heard my warning and still
as if out of nowhere the brilliant white of it
closed in around me so fast as if invisible
sturdy and hard marking exactly
how high i could rise and fall
History Repeating Repeating
Get your hand out my pocket! I shout
to no one in particular, to everyone
under my breath, my shadow
crawling into my pocketbook
searching for the price of the ticket
crawling into my pocketbook
under my breath, my shadow
to no one in particular, to everyone
Get your hand out my pocket! I shout
Facing US
after Yusef Komunyakaa
My black face fades,
hiding inside black smoke.
I knew they’d use it,
dammit: tear gas.
I’m grown. I’m fresh.
Their clouded assumption eyes me
like a runaway, guilty as night,
chasing morning. I run
this way — the street lets me go.
I turn that way — I’m inside
the back of a police van
again, depending on my attitude
to be the difference.
I run down the signs
half-expecting to find
my name protesting in ink.
I touch the name Freddie Gray;
I see the beat cop’s worn eyes.
Names stretch across the people’s banner
but when they walk away
the names fall from our lips.
Paparazzi flash. Call it riot.
The ground. A body on the ground.
A white cop’s image hovers
over us, then his blank gaze
looks through mine. I’m a broken window.
He’s raised his right arm
a gun in his hand. In the black smoke
a drone tracking targets:
No, a crow gasping for air.
Jesus Be: A Prayer
Jesus be a fence
Jesus be a mote
Jesus be a backdoor
Jesus be a friend
Jesus be a payday
Jesus be a hookup
Jesus be a minute
Jesus be a minute
Jesus be a credit
Jesus be a discount
Jesus be a lover
Jesus be a kiss
Jesus be a nap
Jesus be a car
Jesus be a dance
Jesus be a drank
Jesus be a jam
Jesus be a No
Jesus be a exit
Jesus be a home
Jesus be a Monday
Jesus be a Friday
Jesus be a vacay
Jesus be a today
Jesus be a stillness
Jesus be a coffee
Jesus be a stillness
Jesus be a minute
Jesus be a minute
Jesus be a miracle
Jesus be amen
Amanda Johnston was born in East St. Louis, IL, and raised in Austin, TX. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Maine. She is the author of two chapbooks, GUAP and Lock & Key, and the full-length collection Another Way to Say Enter. Her work has appeared in numerous online and print publications, among them, Callaloo, Poetry Magazine, Puerto del Sol, Muzzle, and the anthologies, Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry and Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism. She has received fellowships, grants, and awards from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, Tasajillo, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, The Watermill Center, and the Austin International Poetry Festival. She is a former Board President of the Cave Canem Foundation, a member of the Affrilachian Poets, cofounder of Black Poets Speak Out, and founder of Torch Literary Arts: a nonprofit dedicated to amplifying Black women writers in Central Texas and beyond.
