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April 1975

By Reuben Jackson

Should my black
Flatlander eyes
Lock on the other
Brother
In the General Store?

The first I’ve seen
Since what seems like.…

I can’t count that high

Do I pretend I don’t see
Other people
pretending not to see us?

Two brothers
Buying
Triscuits
And peanut butter,
Respectively,
In Northern New England,
Is revolution
On a Sunday
Afternoon.

Added: Thursday, May 18, 2017  /  Used with permission.
Reuben Jackson

Reuben Jackson (1956 - 2024) was an Archivist with the University of the District of Columbia's Felix E. Grant Jazz Archives. He was an Archivist and Curator with the Smithsonian Institution's Duke Ellington Collection from 1989 until 2009. From 2013 until 2018, he was host of Friday Night Jazz on Vermont Public Radio. His poems have been published in over 40 anthologies, and in two volumes entitled fingering the keys, which was reissued with new poems in October 2019 by Alan Squire Press, and Scattered Clouds. His music reviews have appeared in The Washington Post, Jazz Times, Downbeat, Jazziz, The Jazz Journalists Association website, and on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. He taught poetry for 11 years at the Writer's Center in Bethesda, Maryland, and taught high school for two years in Burlington, Vermont.

Other poems by this author