Inside
By Rodney J. Lee
Inside is a reflective poem that explores my privilege, as it were. Yes, I’m Black, but I recognize my privilege when and where it occurs. My male privilege, the privilege of my education, and the ability to stay inside and work from home during the shutdown. Truly, that was a privilege. Looking back, it hadn’t always been that way for my family. Like many of our families, my family was rooted right here in America during the 1918 Flu; the pandemic that shut down the world almost 100 years ago.
My Grandfather was born in 1887, the son of former slaves. He was the patriarch of nine children through that pandemic and the scorching hot impact of the intense racial riots and strife that surrounded the late nineteen-teens (Red Summer) and the 1920’s. My mother was born in 1929, a decade after the pandemic and a few years before the Great Depression. She was the tenth and final child of her family. Ten years after my mom’s birth, Billie Holiday would record Strange Fruit.
I was born in 1962, right in the middle of the Civil Rights movement. I live in the shadow of privilege cast by those who came before me. Here’s the paradox. One hundred years after the 1918 Flu, our world is again shaken by a pandemic, and George Floyd’s murder brought the racial tension of our nation home like a bad, recurring nightmare from 1919.
It was different for us this time, my family. We have medical professionals, MBAs, and attorneys representing the family line. Hell, my first cousin and her husband are judges on TV. I’m an educator. I was able to work from home while so many others had to go out and be “essential.” So much has changed, yet George Floyd reminded us that we have so far to go. The real privilege is just being here. Life is precious and grand no matter where we stand. We should remember that.
We should also remember and be thankful for the millions who sacrificed their lives so we could stay inside.
Inside
there’s a garden in my prison
there’s a window where I sit
sip sweet coffee and cream and dream
of things we did on the outs’
serving time for no crime
locked up—quarantined
with my dogs and my wife
and our flat screen Portal of Fear
locked up, locked away for
days and days and days
and days
water and rations and Netflix
too few precious paper products
trying desperately to remember momma’s
Depression Era tricks, like Pork n’ Beans
potted meat, saving grease
in cans on the stovetop
turning off all the lights—sitting in the dark
listening to the bump, bump
of the robot vacuuming the other room
things have certainly changed
masked strangers deliver food
3-D printers produce goods
information spills from
speaker boxes with attitudes
I asked Alexa, what was it like during the Depression?
she asked if I wanted to call the Suicide Hotline
get a life, I snapped,
so, she added one to my shopping cart
you can get anything on Amazon
we laugh, and we cry
we garden, and we bake
we sit up all night
talk in nostalgic tones
get to know one another
for the first time all over again
we check the news for the body count before bed
sanitize, log our temperatures, our O2 levels
and we say I love you
in a way that’s different than before
we wonder if this could be it—the end
for all of us
Corona suspected in every breath
every tickle, every cough,
every sniffle, every sneeze
we wonder, hope, pray
that’s the prison, the phobic anxiety
the prolonged panic, stifled worry
the cellblock of paranoia—yet,
we are among the lucky
the successfully socially distanced
lamb’s blood smeared on our doors
those blessed to smell and to taste
the masked ones, the vaccinated
the spared,
the witnesses walled away
inside
during the days of COVID
—RjL
Photograph courtesy of Rodney J. Lee.
Rodney J. Lee is a poet and educator living and performing in Las Vegas, Nevada who is a husband, father, teacher, veteran, and poet. He has published three books: Family Words, A Page and a Pen, and Along These Trails. He’s also been published in some presses and anthologies and has performed in some marvelous spaces and places that humble and awe him. But is that him?
Poetry, he says, is a passion of his that he tries to get better at all the time. He writes for himself alone. One voice among the people—the grassroots, every day, pedestrian, citizens of this country, the planet. It is they he says—the people—who are each region’s poem. Their lives the verses—each community a distinct stanza. Poetry is one way we share our similar differences together. It’s beautiful, he says. He tries to write what he sees and hears; he tries to retell it in rhythm and verse. Functional. He aspires to make poetry functional in the community—alive. This has been his focus for his craft for over 45 years, here in Las Vegas, and in his hometown, Gary, Indiana, where his poetry and performance began in the 1970’s.
Writing and sharing words, sharing ideas and thoughts, bringing people together. It is what humankind has done since we’ve been human. It is what poets have always done. May the tradition of the oral poet live forever and ever. Rodney feels blessed to be a part of that magic in whatever modest and respectful way he can. He hopes everyone can discover the poetry in their lives.
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