Photography and sculpture © Ira Joel Haber

 

 

My Future
In Loving Memory of George Floyd

I watch the livestream of Minneapolis Police Department’s 3rd Precinct
On fire
And as the smoke and flames reach toward the sky, I think to myself,
“This is how I want to be remembered.”
When racism gets me killed in this country, let there be riots in the streets
May the conflagration be a monument to my rage
May it be the scorching indictment against a system
that exploits, disavows, and disenfranchises people who look like me
And then has the audacity
to proclaim itself the greatest nation in the world
I want the country to feel my hands as they fan the flames
To see how each tongue of fire
Is ripped straight from my ancestors’ mouths
And I want you to watch us burn the land to nothing but ashes

I hope someone live-streams it

The news calls the protests “demonstrations”
So pay close attention to how I show you this dissent
Watch every building, and business go up in flames
Watch me take back and consume everything
this country forced my people to build
Until I burn like a second Sun through the night
Watch how I burn, bitch
Burn

 

Jordyn King (They/Them) is a performance and slam poet situated in Atlanta, GA whose work often deals with issues surrounding the intersection of their black and queer identities. Jordyn’s work has been showcased in events throughout the United States, including at Atlanta Pride 2019, and the 2019 Feminine Empowerment Movement Slam, where Jordyn led their own novice team, Scattered Heart Slam, in Boston. In addition to having finished working on their second book, Paris Resurrected, Jordyn represents Atlanta as a member of the 2020 Art Amok National Poetry Slam team, and is recognized as Femme Mafia’s first Poet Laureate.

Ira Joel Haber was born and lives in Brooklyn. He is a sculptor, painter, writer, book dealer, photographer and teacher. His work has been seen in numerous group shows both in the USA and Europe and he has had 9 one man shows including several retrospectives of his sculpture. His work is in the collections of The Whitney Museum Of American Art, New York University, The Guggenheim Museum, The Hirshhorn Museum,The Albright-Knox Art Gallery & The Allen Memorial Art Museum. Since 2006 His paintings, drawings, photographs and collages have been published in over 230 on line and print magazines. He has received three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, two Creative Artists Public Service Grant (CAPS), two Pollock-Krasner grants, two Adolph Gottlieb Foundation grants and, in 2010, he received a grant from Artists’ Fellowship Inc. in 2017 & 2018 he received the Brooklyn Arts Council SU-CASA artist-in-residence grant.