Dear Chase Bank
As a cardholder I am distressed by the Chase ad, currently running on the Golf Channel, with an African American male at a gas pump, prancing around and jiving about how wonderful his Chase card is, while apparently too stupid to know which side of the car the gas tank is on.
Make no mistake, as an old white man I am glad to see a black actor featured in an Ad for a major financial institution. Especially since major banks are conspicuously absent from the historically black neighborhoods I drive through in Philadelphia.
But in this era of Black Lives Matter, to have that actor portray a stereotypical racist image of a drug dealer on Speed getting gas and being stupid is not only offensive but blatantly reinforces our worst and deepest instincts. I trust my reaction is not what Chase intended. It’s definitely NOT FUNNY.
—Neil Hoffmann
Dear Chase
And so it continues – all of the buffoons, black faced big eyed on and on and on,
but we as white people we never learn – we’re followers after all
(din’t they report that almost three quarters of President Trumps base believes every one of his lies?).
OK, so where’s the poem?
Outside the heat takes away the air,
no breeze, no movement in flowers or trees,
no, it’s true, no one is out, no one can breathe.
Is it so impossible to turn within ourselves
find the buttons to push to change?
(Did you know the first white skin showed up
six to eight thousand years ago? We come from Africa.
We were all Africans. Then a gene helped us survive
cold, a lack of vitamin D. The gene? Nope –
it didn’t make white people smarter or stronger,
taller or better workers, thinkers or tinkers.
It just gave us a way for get Vitamin D in the cold.)
OK, OK. So I haven’t got to the poem yet.
First,
we settled among a people of the mountains,
second,
we sang to the melodies of wind and storm.
Later,
we discovered earth strong in possibilities
and we made them our own.
Stone is not so far from bone,
flint is not that far from pyrite,
fire is not a domesticated dog:
let us take large steps into the hills,
find the bones of those we hated,
look for the teeth of those we ignored,
set the world back on its pedestal:
Ahh! Here’s the poem –
A Color to Mud
If we are to believe the Bible, all of us came from the dirt of the earth. Can this be why God created so many colors of mud?
—Deborah Wymbs
1.
Everything present, first mud.
Everyone in place, first mud.
2.
Suddenly,
a dimpling of clouds/a shadow of sunshine
like the farming wife’s farming husband,
the nurse who somehow knows of him,
and their easy way of talking.
3.
A ghost is always in the equation,
near death but not dying,
or a remembered dead, sasha,
or the hunter who went into the forest
and never came out,
zamani, the forgotten dead,
until his grandson asked,
“What ever happened to Granddaddy?”
and the grandchildren of the great snake
near the bones by the dry stream bed apologized
and venom that took a life, healed it.
Muscle knitted to bone.
Blood vessel attached to muscle.
Layers of skin protected lifelines.
A wind threw itself up.
The man gasped,
sat up,
felt the need to run.
He was able to fly.
When he arrived home,
he held The Artifact of Great Value.
His family lined up to receive it,
and his neighbors, friends, an enemy or two.
He had eyes only for his grandson
and he reached for him,
his hands slipping.
He could not hold weight.
But The Artifact of Great Value was real.
The boy picked it up, placed it to his ear,
heard the digging of the dead.
He went on to be a great healer of The People.
4.
A bridge is necessary all of the time.
Dear white people
Let’s get on the bridge and do the right thing. Racism is not a necessary evil. It can be thrown off, thrown away, destroyed.
Won’t you join me on the bridge?
—Michael H. Brownstein
| Copyright © 2020 by Michael H. Brownstein Michael H. Brownstein’s volumes of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else and How Do We Create Love?, were published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018 & 2019, respectively. |
I never got a response from Chase. Not surprising.
ReplyDeleteHmm...how might I get Michael’s poem, as-is, led off by your letter, to Chase upper management? Or, perhaps better yet, can anyone help the poem get over the transom at the New Yorker Magazine?
DeleteWonderful poem--I[m jealous he didn't send it to me.
ReplyDeleteCan't get in the comment zone. This is Deborah Wymbs and I always love Michael's work. Bravo for having the courage to publish his work.
ReplyDeleteDeborah, I’m delighted that publishing Michael’s work has brought you to Moristotle &Co. As for courage, I didn’t realize any was needed to speak truth, although, in this age of you-know-who, some danger is involved. The previous commenter (Lennie Cox) has the courage too, I see. Jealous courage!
DeleteSomeone asked me how he might get Michael’s poem, as-is, to Chase upper management, or even over the transom at the New Yorker Magazine?
ReplyDeleteBetter yet, submit it to the Yale Literary Magazine.
Meghan O’Rourke is the new editor. Meghan is an exceptional talent who joined the New Yorker staff while still a Yale undergrad and left many a poem and essay behind when she moved on. I expect she’ll elevate the Lit back to the vanguard where it started a century ago.
Feel free to use my name, but your talent speaks for itself.
By the way, psychology only recently split out of philosophy departments but not out of your wheelhouse.
Thank you, everyone, for the wonderful comments and the great suggestions. I'd like very much to be published in the Yale Review, but they only take unpublished manuscripts. I will send them something else though. I hope Chase Bank also takes notice.
ReplyDeleteWhat previous publication are you referring to, Michael, not this one here, I take it? If only to this one here, tell Meghan that Moristotle is a Yale classmate of Nortin’s and he’ll gladly unpublish the poem here if she will publish it in the Yale Lit.
DeleteGreat idea Morris. The last bit led me to consider how appropriate the bridge analogy is in light of the recent loss of John Lewis, one of MLK's strongest supporters, and their march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge so many years ago.
ReplyDelete