Portside

The cold snow moon reminds us that
for you, no more rocking chairs or sunsets,
cicadas or cockroaches, or the mashed
bibles of Christian Nationalists who try
to justify your murder in the name of god.
By what ruler to reduce things, hard-edged
& splintering, can the crimes of fascists
be measured and brought to justice?
The brook of your soul was by no means
piddly nor your faith fickle nor your love.
For them you were martyred, shot
by the uniformed, masked thugs
of the empire grown rotten with hate & fear,
a toxic patriotism clothed in a ragged flag
and swinging a cross like a war club
to impose the right of crude might & of greed.
By the moon, we will not stand by cowed
and cowering as they demand of us to be,
but howling like coyotes at the snow moon
we will raise our voices in your name
and by our silence not be damned.

Rafael Jesús González, Prof. Emeritus of Creative Writing & Literature and Mexican & Latin American Studies, has been four times nominated for a Pushcart Prize, was honored by the National Council of Teachers of English for his writing in 2003, received a César E. Chávez Lifetime Award 2013 and one by the city of Berkeley 2015. He was named Berkeley's first Poet Laureate 2017. Also a visual artist, he has exhibited at the Oakland Museum of California, the Mexican Museum of San Francisco, and other venues. http://rjgonzalez.blogspot.com/ (Given the enormous reaction to the  murder of Renee Nicole Good, Portside is publishing 2 poems this week about her death. We’ll return to our one a week schedule next week.)