by Gil Hoy I had a nightmare last night A nightmare deeply rooted in an American nightmare Where churches and schools theaters and city streets were dying Where military weapons were firing into unsuspecting innocent crowds Tentwentythirtyfortyfifty pigeons intheblinkofaneye I awoke in a terrified sweat as bleeding children wailed and cried and screamed…
by Gil Hoy
by Gil Hoy Sometimes in today’s America The rights of rioting white supremacists trump the rights of black football players kneeling Peacefully, holding hands. And for some particularly wealthy Tweet bosses, The earth is not Warming, forget the ship-wrecked Mexican American and there is no community of man. The earth’s squirrels …
By Gil Hoy When I was in Charlottesville studying the law. Where the vestiges of racism Were carefully hidden under a rug. Its stain absorbed by the wise, aging wood Or swept away by a black, hopeful janitor. He diligently cleaned Jefferson’s hallways and bathrooms So that one or more…
by Gil Hoy Their homes, cone-shaped wooden poles covered with buffalo hides. Set up to break down quickly to move to a safer place. She sits inside of one of them, adorning her dresses, her family’s shirts, with beads and quills. Watches over her children, skins cuts and cooks the…
by Gil Hoy I. I see you, Walt Whitman, an American Rough, a cosmos! I see you face to face! I see you and the nameless faceless Faces in America’s ageless crowds of men and women who you saw in your mind’s eye. I see you crossing the river on…
by Gil Hoy I never appropriately Thanked you, Mr. Blue Man. I was just a dumb kid and didn’t know any better. I was moving, one day after turning eighteen. Signed up one of those cheap orange, black and White Rent–a–trucks, only Twelve bucks a day. My high school friends…
by Gil Hoy In Squirrel Hill, Pennsylvania, while in the third grade, I often trekked to my best friend’s home up the street, a backpack of books strapped to my small growing back. We read through pages and pages then, in a quiet little study in a remote corner on…
by Gil Hoy from Afghanistan and Iraq, heroes against German and Japanese imperialism, and the sacrificed souls in “the war to end all wars.” But also thank Custer’s soldiers for not completing the genocide. I went to bed and dreamt that Sitting Bull saw Hiroshima and Nagasaki in a vision…
by Gil Hoy I used to love reading books. The routine was always the same. I would visit my third grade schoolmate up the street. We would read and read for hours, in a peaceful little study in his house. Our parents were oh so satisfied with their precocious prepubescent…