jonathan andrew perez
The Color Blind: (n.) the a-moral, fundamental systemic inequity, origin-less of the world
Vagrant Law villain, Mississippi,
Swan song, origin less
Whooping crane, vagrancy laws, mess
You left alone, without lumbering on the runway.
Inhabiting Jim Crow-red scarlet scarves neck.
Hundred buttressed mission
All rogues and vagabonds, segregated capes
Whooping Crane oak voice print
Among the guarded thicket,
In the agriculture, and domestic worker, South
Far-reaching familial invasions, orange-beaked,
Apartment building to apartment building.
Reddish trumpet, an extraterrestrial chimera
Stripped, striped, a chorus of statutory laws
That made standing become contract labor, and the flock
Is flitting, the loitering man gleamed illusion of bondage.
Broken, landed far-reaching familial
Suited story, the chain-gang from transitory stands, stood
Private-ebony-and-blanched woods of a vanquished
Century, into alleys North, absence
Resulting in systems split by those who stood around and lied
To the casting of justice under the paternalistic sunlight that fell off
The backs concealed under the depth-perceiving
And single-powered eyes that resumed hiding under the democratic cloak.
***
Jonathan Andrew Pérez has published poetry in Collateral, Prelude, The River Heron Review, Blood Tree Literature,The Bookends Review, The Westchester Review, Crack the Spine Quarterly, Silver Needle Press, Projector Magazine, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Rise Up, BARNHOUSE, The Chicago Quarterly Review, Worcester Review, Hiram Poetry Review and Quiddity on NPR. Jonathan is in POETRY in January 2020. Jonathan won the 2019 Poetry Prize from Split Lip Magazine chosen by Chen Chen. Jonathan’s debut chapbook, “The Justice Elegies,” was released in March 2020 by Finishing Line Press. In the January 2020 issue of Poetry Magazine, you will find Perez’s poem “Bobolinks as a Flock of Signifiers.” He has a day job as a trial attorney and teaches poetry at Wesleyan University.