This Week's Friendly Reminder

A sadly appropriate sticker put up sometime during Black History Month.

SAFE DISTANCE EDITION: Stone Soup Croutons, 6-24-20: A Matter to Listen

Stone Soup Croutons is a weekly poem I write using lines and impressions picked from Stone Soup's open mic readers and features. I figure out a title (and sometimes the rest of the poem) later. You can read the other ones I've done since 2015 here. To paraphrase Lorne Michaels, this poem doesn't go up because it's ready, it goes up because it's Friday morning.

 Jamilla VanDyke-Bailey gave us an amazing feature Wednesday night. I'm grateful to her for being Stone Soup's historical first online feature. I hope you will support her if you haven't already. I hope you support her through her Cashapp ($thekweenmother) her Venmo (links to it will be on Facebook) or by buying her book.

I also want to preface the poem below saying that while I make allusions in the body of thepoe to Kendrick Johnson and Breonna Taylor, (both mentioned by Jamilla during her feature). I even made referrence to a story about one of George Floyd's murderers from last weekend. This is due to the way I try to reflect the content of the open mic in the final poem and not meant to minimize their tragedies. In fact, I urge you before reading my poem to read up on to look up their stories if you don't already know them and try to use existing hashtags on Facebook and Twitter to raise public awareness. Thanks for reading.

A Matter to Listen

Toxic partners role play their abuse,
Bondage and Bandages until one
realizes it's no longer a game.

World leaders launch force from space,
try to hit part of the little blue dot
that doesn't include one percent.

This Week's Friendly Reminder

Visit the Justice for Breonna Taylor site.

It's a whole new world with each passing week.