POEM PUBLISHED IN THE NEW 2013 VINTAGE VOICES
ANTHOLOGY, REDWOOD WRITERS, SONOMA COUNTY.
EMANCIPATION SECTION.....PG 43
POSTCARDS OF DEATH
It was a twenty-first century event.
Images were hung on a Mississippi gallery wall
for an exhibition of black and white
photos sold for a souvenir
of anonymous faces posed in fear.
Images that were mailed as picture postcards
by lynching mobs and tourists,
who gathered to watch and wait
for the moment of entry at Death's gate,
without guilt for the innocent,
without trial by a jury,
with no one to shout:
"Set him free! Set him free!
from the hangman's tree!"
Emancipation came too late
for those African ancestors,
thought to be less than human
by photographers, who profited
from their postcards of death.
@2013 Nina Tepedino
Today I read this poem at the Reading Circle venue at the Sonoma County Book Festival, at the Santa Rosa Junior College
Happy Fall Equinox!!
photo by Greg Pfeiffer
