Remembering Debi Starnes

My recently published SACRED GRAMMAR is selling. It teaches the basics of grammar using verses from the Bible. It shows why, “I seen him when he done it.” is incorrect and how “I saw him when he did it.” is correct. My next book is PEE WEE, the true-life novel of South Carolina’s most notorious mass murderer, Donald Henry Gaskins. I interviewed Pee Wee 52 times in the South Carolina pen in Columbia. Charleston Attorney O. Grady Query introduced me to Gaskins years ago and furnished expertise on Gaskins having defended Pee Wee’s facing the death penalty. The State of South Carolina murdered Pee Wee in 1991 for his last murder of Rudolf Tyner. PEE WEE could be available by the end of the year.

Two other books in the making are FIFTY FAVORITES and PALACE POLITICS, TEMPLE THEOLOGY. FIFTY FAVORITES features my commentaries on 50 of my favorite poems that I have taught in English classes over the years. PALACE POLITICS,TEMPLE THEOLOGY is a comparison of ancient Jerusalem and current Atlanta as seen through the eyes of my favorite Hebrew prophet, Jeremiah of Anathoth.

Readers of my blogs have suggested that I publish my pieces as a book. I can’t imagine such as I blog only for my own sanity. However, I do want to publish DESPERATE DEPOSITIONS, a book featuring the explosive discovery that exposes the myriad of players on TEAM GOLIATH. The magnitude of this conspiracy has grown to such proportions that many books could follow. The sleaze of downtown Atlanta leadership grows as the clock ticks. This cancerous growth flourishes out of a fertile heap of greed, racism and exclusion.

I mention these books in order to feature the fragile Debi Starnes, clearly one of GOLIATH’S pawns. The words in her two depositions make the reader laugh, cry, chill, thrill, spill, gasp, grope and pray. A drinking man would. If I didn’t know her victims, I would be tempted to feel sorry for her. The following questions and answers from her September 02, 2009 deposition give an example of what will fill the book, DESPERATE DEPOSITIONS.

My title for this piece is, “Remembering Debi Starnes.” Relax, Debi Starnes is very much with us. Her emotional state wavers and her spiritual condition teeters, but like Virgil’s Rumor she refuels herself through her good work. She’s The Czar.

Hall: You said that Mr. Walker brought you a packet of papers.
Starnes: No, I didn’t. I said that when I met with him, he – – I don’t even remember. He probably had a picture, maybe gave me something. I don’t know if he did or didn’t. I don’t know if he just had big pictures of his project. I remember seeing a picture of what the project would look like, but I got no proposals, no application, nothing to review, that I recall at all. I remember no details other than a visual of what it would look like on upper floors of the building.
Hall: Ms. Starnes, have you ever been diagnosed with any type of mental problem that affects your ability to remember things?
Mr. Haymore: (City Attorney) Objection.
Starnes: Not formally diagnosed.
Hall: Are you taking any type of medication today?
Starnes: No.
Hall: Have you ever been cited or prosecuted for perjury?
Starnes: No.

Note: The “Mr. Walker” in Starnes’ answers is Pete Walker then employed by Mercy Housing, Inc. The project in the discussion is proposed mixed housing that was being discussed with The Pine. The $10,000,000 project would have provided mixed housing, possibly 180 units on top of the present structure known as Peachtree-Pine. Above I mentioned Starnes’ “victims.” Many of the African-American men living at The Pine would have qualified for that housing. Many elderly men living at The Pine would have qualified for that housing. Many of the disabled men living at The Pine would have qualified for that housing. Many African-American women and their children sent over to the Pine from The Gateway would have qualified for that housing.

Each of these groups of American citizens is a protected class, protected by federal and state laws from the Starnes and Sibleys and Rene Glovers and Manny Fialkows and A. J. Robinsons who conspire to vanish them from sight. The mixed housing that was blocked by Starnes and her fellow conspirators would have helped meet the City’s federal requirement to provide housing for the poor. The City, however, does not want to provide housing for certain people, certainly not on Peachtree Street.

James Wilson Beaty
Jeremiah 22.16
March 30,2011

Atlanta Attorney: “Nothing like it before, ever!”

“Nothing like it before, ever!” are the words an Atlanta attorney used to describe the current lawsuits exposing the City of Atlanta and its fellow conspirators that I have named, TEAM GOLIATH. For example, Central Atlanta Progress (CAP) recently celebrated its 70th anniversary. This muscular organ of downtown Atlanta, to my knowledge, has never been subpoenaed to answer for any of its actions. That is not until February 22 and 23, 2010, when its brass Richard Orr and A. J. Robinson were deposed respectively.

Horace Sibley, chair of Mayor Shirley Franklin’s Commission to End Homelessness, said UNDER OATH that he had never been deposed ever before his January 10, 2010 questioning. Czar of Homelessness Debi Mae Starnes has been deposed two times. United Way’s Protip Biswas, DCA’s John Bassett, Americorps’ John Turner and Kate Webb, City of Atlanta’s Bonnie Ware and Mayor Shirley Franklin have been deposed.
Atlanta’s legal community is buzzing. The marvel is not that the good ole boy downtown buddy systems have been caught. Scholars Larry Keating and Chuck Rutheiser have written books busting them. But the wonder of these lawsuits is that the City, CAP, ADID, United Way, Emory Health Care, Inc., Ichthus’ Manny Fialkow, the Peachtree Corridor clerics, the nun-run Mercy Housing, Inc. and others COULD have to answer for their actions against poor people in front of a jury. And their answers COULD have civil and criminal consequences.

I can’t recall a lawsuit that has brought out so many law firms scurrying to rescue their own. Some of these firms represent the cream of Atlanta’s legal profession. Alongside A. J. Robinson and Richard Orr sits Troutman Sanders. Alongside Horace Sibley sit King and Spaulding and McKenna, Long and Aldridge. Alongside Debi Mae Starnes sit the City of Atlanta attorneys. Alongside United Way’s Protip Biswas sits McKenna, Long and Aldridge. Alongside Shirley Franklin sits Ruth Woodling. Alongside Emory health Care, Inc. sits Arnall, Gold and Gregory. I don’t know who will represent the nun-run Mercy Housing, Inc., perhaps Dewey, Cheatam and Howe.

The legal profession is watching. Tortious Interference, collusion, conspiracy, fraud and racketeering rule the day in downtown Atlanta. But exposure in front of a jury with possible civil and criminal consequence COULD bring a new day to downtown. Listen for the rattling of the cages of Atlanta’s decadent, downtown power elite. The caught are furious. Does a worm squirm? Somebody will pay for little David’s five smooth stones.

Remember that CAP’s A. J. Robinson told The Chamber’s Sam Williams that “Baker Denelson is on the wrong side of this lawsuit.” He added to his buddy that it could cost Baker Donelson down the road. CAP controls law firms too, most of them.

James Wilson Beaty
Jeremiah 22.16
March 29, 2011

Rector Hoare: “And why should we not hold people accountable for their behavior…”

On Super Bowl Sunday, February 6, 2011, a sermon entitled, “Doing Justice” was delivered by the CEO of “something called” All Saints Episcopal Church. This Atlanta stronghold of faith boasts Rector Geoffrey Hoare as its spiritual leader. In his sermon he attacks the leadership and residents of the largest shelter for homeless people in the Southeast. He throws in the Concerned Black Clergy to sweeten the mix. From the pulpit of his 5000 member church he used some of the following words and expressions: “Conditions…squalid,” “a place of last resort,” “They haven’t paid their bills.” “conditions…are unhealthy and dangerous.”

In the middle of his diatribe, Rector Hoare said to his fellow Christians, “And why should we not hold people accountable for their behavior,….”

Rector Hoare’s paths and my paths never cross. We don’t go to the same places. The only time, to my knowledge, that I ever saw the Rector was at the dedication of the Peachtree Pine building in the late nineties. Edna Wardlaw (The Wardlaw Family Fund) had purchased the building from St. Luke’s Episcopal Church for $1.3 million dollars. That precious woman was at that dedication and thankful that the building was going to help less fortunate human beings. Rector Hoare and several of his fellow Peachtree Corridor clerics were there, a bit uneasy, tongue in cheek, asking God’s blessing on homeless people. PLEASE!

I have read only a few of Rector Hoare’s sermons. I have not read his books, essays or prayers. I applaud his English accent and envy his irresistable charm. I cannot follow his thought process, and his syntax leaves me bewildered. However, I must say, that I wholehearted agree with his Delphic oracle, “And why should we not hold people accountable for their behavior…? If I could stand on the rooftop of “something called” All Saints, I would shout it. If I could stand on the rooftop of The Hurt Building, I would proclaim it. If I could stand on the rooftop of Peachtree-Pine, (I can, and I have) I would publish it. “I thank the Rector!” “I thank the Hoare!” “Hold people accountable for their behavior.”

PEOPLE, PEOPLE, ALL PEOPLE must be held accountable for their behavior. In addition to the penniless “treatment-resistant population” and “the management” and the board of directors of the Peachtree-Pine Community, ALL “people” must be held accountable for their behavior. The law firm, Baker Donelson, is doing all it can to “hold accountable” TEAM GOLIATH. Let me list a few of those TEAM members that I humbly suggest will be held accountable in the courts, out of the courts and before the COURT of God:

1. Priests of the church
2. The City of Atlanta
3. Central Atlanta Progress
4 Atlanta Downtown Improvement District
5. The Chamber of Commerce
6. Atlanta City Council
7. The Tri-Jurisdictional Continuum of Care
8. Emory Health Care, Inc.
9. Cousins Properties
10. Berry Realty
11. Mercy Housing, Inc.
12. Ichthus, Inc.
13. Benevolent Trust
14. Peachtree Corridor Churches
15. Atlanta United Way
16. The Gateway
17. NPU-M
18. Central Area Neighbors (CAN)

Thank you, Rector Hoare, for calling us all to accountability. Shout it from the highest hill! I am learning day by day that courtrooms and federal complaints have a way of holding “people” accountable.

James Wilson Beaty
Jeremiah 22.16
March 23, 2011

The Magnitude and Power Of TEAM GOLIATH

For at least a dozen years, Central Atlanta Progress has opposed the existence of The Community at Peachtree-Pine which is owned and operated by the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, Inc. For forty years, CAP, that Atlanta badge of downtown business, has fostered racism at its clearest (Professor Larry Keating). CAP President A. J. Robinson in a letter to Lisa Borders complained that CAP had been called a racist organization and had been likened to plantation owners. CAP’s racism didn’t begin with the ilk of A. J. Robinson. He and his cronies inherited that accurate label. He wears it proudly, but he did not create it. A good ole boy buddy system, smiling as it thrusts the sword through the heart is the modus operandi of those do gooders.

The Community at Peachtree-Pine practices everything that Central Atlanta Progress despises: inclusiveness, acceptance of everyone, forgiveness, generosity, love your neighbor as yourself, longsuffering, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

The Pine is a 94,000 square foot building that sides on Pine Street from Peachtree Street down the hill to Courtland Street, four stories on Courtland and two stories on Peachtree, PRIME REAL ESTATE. Half of TEAM GOLIATH wants to steal the building, (Micah 2:1,2) and the other half represented by harridans like Peggy Denby simply hate Black males for whatever psychological sicknesses, God knows, trigger their neuroses.

The width and breadth heighth and depth of the TEAM GOLIATH conspiracy stuns those of us whose lives are so tightly wrapped in that place called The Pine. There’s a sweet, sweet Spirit in that place. And every day that I walk in there I am renewed and ministered to by individuals who never one day of their lives have ever been given the privileges and rights and joys and luxuries that I enjoy every day. Yet they help me. They bless me. They make me feel honored to have been with them.

And Rector Hoare says from his pulpit in a thing called All Saints Episcopal Church that those 650 African-American men are all “treatment-resistant.” Horace Sibley learned the term “chronically homeless” from the W Administration and said UNDER OATH that those men at The Pine should not have bicycles. Bicycles would help them obtain drugs. Debi Starnes told me at lunch years ago that the men at The Pine are more disposed to sexual activity than the rest of us.

But I tell you there is a sweet, sweet spirit in that place, and that Spirit stays there with us. And when we leave that place we know that we have been revived, renewed, rewarded. Rector Hoare has heard that “squalid” is there. Others who have been there to see the place know the kingdom of God is there. My buddy The Rev. David van Kronkite is teaching me that knowing Jesus fully means to know the Father. I don’t know any of that; however, I know Rector Hoare’s “treatment-resistant” men living in “squalid” conditions at The Pine show me my best view of the Father.

The magnitude and power of TEAM GOLIATH reaches farther than the eye can see. However, in my next writing I will name the organizations who I know have joined CAP to take The Pine from the present owners under the guise of saving homeless people from the throes of the Task Force for the Homeless. They publish that the people there are incarcerated by Grandmother Anita Beaty, the witch of Midtown.

Wise and Godly people ask me to name names and tell all that I know of the conspirators. They ask that I put Rector Hoare in his place. (Rector Hoare is ALREADY in his place.) My children beg me to stop blogging as they fear for my life. I wish I could stop it all. I wish I could read Dickens and hit golf balls and write a book or two. Every time I decide to do that, quit I mean, I look into those glorious faces, those men who call The Pine their home, those citizens of Atlanta who were represented by the likes of Shirley Franklin and Bill Campbell and now Something Reed who promised men at The Pine he would visit if they voted for him. They did. He didn’t.

I hear their struggles and their victories. I listen of news from their families. I see them becoming case workers helping countless people every day. I visit them in jail. I know their names. I know their dreams. I shake their hands. I hug them. I referee their internal family squabbles. I’m doubled damned before I’ll ever leave them. I feel more comfortable with them than I do with the comfortable clerics along the cleansed Peachtree corridor. Not one man at The Pine has ever stabbed me in the back. They have my back, and I have theirs.

In my next blog I will list every conspiring organization, that I know, that has joined the Good Ship CAP in its determination to bury The Pine and the Black men who call it home. That list grows daily. I may miss a few because evil, like rodents and cancer, is difficult to harness.

Goodnight, Shirley. Goodnight, Notip. Goodnight, Horace. Goodnight, Jack Hardin. Goodnight, KKK. Goodnight, A. J. Goodnight, Peggy. Goodnight, Rufus. I’ll be by for a Margarita. Goodnight, Al Blackwelder, I’ll see you in court. Goodnight, CREATIVE LOAFING. Good night, Chris Allers. Goodnight, Rev. Elligan. Goodnight, Rector Hoare. Goodnight, Milton Little. Goodnight, Tri-Jurisdictional Continuum of Care, Goodnight United Way, Goodnight Cousins, Properties, Goodnight Sam Williams, Goodnight Judy, Goodnight, Jim Lee Scott, Goodnight, Chuck, Goodnight, Allison, Goodnight, Motley, Goodnight, Lattimore, Goodnight Rick, Goodnight, Paul, Goodnight Jack Jackson, Goodnight, Johnson, Goodnight Antoinette. My love and blessing to each of you.

James Wilson Beaty
Jeremiah 22.16
March 16, 2011

Shirley Franklin Deposition Taken Yesterday, March 15, 2011

Shirley Franklin, former Mayor of Atlanta was deposed by Baker Donelson Attorney Steve Hall from 10 am to 7 pm. I am forbidden by the Baker Donelson attorneys to comment on anything that was asked or answered in the deposition until it is “made public.” However, I can tell my readers that I believe Franklin’s deposition to be the most telling of the dozen or so already taken during this long, arduous uncovering of the decade-long conspiracy to close The Pine and to disappear the people in that community.

My lips are sealed and my pen is still, for the moment. But I promise you this. If the Lord gives me breath, and my gnarled fingers can reach the keys, I’ll sing like a canary the day I am furnished with the printed questions and answers. Be patient my little ones. Contrary to widespread public opinion among the unwashed, God is not dead.

James Wilson Beaty
Jeremiah 22.16
March 16, 2011

Shirley Franklin Sets A Record

Shirley Franklin gave us Starnes and Sibley. Today she set a record for hours answering questions in a deposition. That champion of homeless Atlantans has been grilled since 10 am today, this March 15, 2011. Having counted the times that Horace Sibley and A. J. Robinson and Richard Orr and Debi Starnes and Bonnie Ware and Greg Pridgen bore false witness in their depositions, I wonder if there is a corollation between the length of time of the deposition and the number of times a witness lies to the jury. I cannot wait to see how many times Steve Hall says, “Ms. Franklin, as we sit here today, are you telling the jury UNDER OATH that so and so, such and such is the case?” That is always a red flag that is asking the witness, “Do you want to tell that lie again?” “Or can you and your lawyers dig out of the mess you have created?”

Whether the honorable former mayor, “so help me God,” told the truth or lied UNDER OATH this good day, our leader Shirley Franklin has been at it non-stop, with a few breaks, for seven (7) hours this redemptive day in March. It’s 6:30 p. m. and she’s not through yet. I can only assume she had a long, long list of things to tell that she and Debi and Horace and Protip Biswax and Jack Hardin and Great news Wardell and Paul KKK and A. J. mystified and Milton $$$ Little and Chris Allers and the AJC and CREATIVE LOAFING and Richard Orr and Peggy Denby and Bonnie Ware and Greg Pridgen and Bruce Gunter and Rector Hoare and Manny Fialkow and Sister Jane Gerety and Pete Walker and Howdy Doody did to end homelessness in Atlanta. These pretenders have created a train wreck.

James Wilson Beaty
Jeremiah 22.16
March 15, 2011

Shirley Franklin UNDER OATH, March 15, 2011, Beware of the Ides of March

Shirley Franklin is the former mayor of Atlanta. She is presently the Chairperson of the Commission on Homelessness. That is a strange thing because she succeeds Horace Sibley in that position. There is no reason for that position to exist because Horace “Don’t let them have bicycles” Sibley ended homelessness. Oops! I forgot. He didn’t end The Community at Peachtree Pine. TEAM GOLIATH has that hill called SISYPHUS.

This morning at 10 Shirley Franklin will answer questions in the very place where she reigned for 8 years, 8 years of terror for homeless people on the streets of Atlanta. To my knowledge Franklin as Mayor not one time visited The Pine. She drove by many times. One time her “DRIVE BY” purpose was to takes notes; she drove slowly. Like Horace “On his bicycle” Sibley, Franklin boasts as a champion of homeless people. But Franklin’s greatest gift to homeless people was the Czar, her familiar, the indomitable, Debi Starnes. For my fictional account of the nearly all-night banquet when Franklin gave Starnes her blessing to bury the Community at Peachtree-Pine, read in April of 2009, “The Hag Delivers Again.” That was the night Franklin gave Starnes her sceptre, a BROOM. Look to the skies above The Hurt Building.

Sam Snead said he would rather face a charging elephant than face a four-foot putt. Shirley Franklin this glad, rainy, dark Ides of March morning faces two bright lights, Baker Donelson’s, Bob Brazier and Steve Hall. Were I the Franklin I would prefer Snead’s elephant. The wheels of justice grind.

James Wilson Beaty
Jeremiah 22.16
March 15, 2011

United Way’s Protip Biswas UNDER OATH

Protip Biswas, like Debi Starnes, picks up his paycheck at Atlanta United Way. Unlike Debi Starnes he works there. Protip Biswas is the tenth member of TEAM GOLIATH to face Baker Donelson attorneys with questions concerning the seventeen year conspiracy that itches to disappear African-American men from downtown Atlanta. This CONSPIRATA has grown to gigantic proportions; however, good ole boy racism according to scholars like former Georgia Tech professor, Larry Keating, has been traced constantly to the tainted Central Atlanta Progress. CAP and its Siamese sister ADID pay their errand girl, Debi “INSIDE or OUTSIDE” Starnes for her endless efforts to slander the Peachtree-Pine Community, its Board, its staff and its residents.

Protip Biswas may fear lying UNDER OATH as he is deposed at 10 am Friday, March 11. However, if he tells the WHOLE TRUTH, TEAM GOLIATH may come to a mountain it cannot climb. Those doers of all good may become Sisyphus pushing that rock to the top of the hill only to have it roll to the bottom again. Oh, Lord, what a morning, when the stars begin to fall. You’ll hear the sinners mourn; you’ll hear the nations underground, looking to their God’s right hand, when the stars begin to fall.

Protip Biswas may tell the truth. Thousands of pages of e-mails and letters and memos, some of whom are to him, from him and about him. Many put Jack Hardin, once UW Board Chair, and United Way president Milton Little in the cauldron that boils above the coals of conspiracy. United Way like Atlanta’s sometime newspaper cannot be sued for its lies UNLESS something or someone loses a career, like Richard Jewell of 1996 Olympic days. Some bogus immunity protects newsletters like the AJC. But both those monsters, Atlanta United Way and the Atlanta Journal Constitution are deep in the snake pit with all the other conspirators.

I have copies of the depositions of every single conspirator. I file them alongside Rector Hoare’s Super Bowl sermon delivered to the saints of that stronghold of Christian faith, something called All Saints Episcopal Church. Each of his paragraphs bears false witness. Rector Hoare was not under oath when he bore false witness. But he was in a pulpit representing some God somewhere. His problem, if I know anything, is that he operates UNDER OATH to a higher power than any court in our struggling, shaky land. When I get the words of Protip Biswas two weeks from now, we will look at his words UNDER OATH.

Watch the skies. Debi Starnes still flies high above the Hurt Building and on over to United Way and then back to City Hall. If you read my blogs you know that she can touch me with her broom when we frequent our watering hole at the same time.

Don’t forget that the depositions of Shirley Franklin and Pete Walker are scheduled for the near future. Pete Walker no longer works for the nun-run Mercy Housing, Inc. He has moved on to higher things, but his lower activities with his cronies are documented in hundreds of e-mails with conspirators such Central Atlanta Progress’s president, A. J. Robinson and Horace “Don’t let them have bicycles” Sibley.

James Wilson Beaty
Jeremiah 22.16
March 11, 2011

Debi Starnes, Horace Sibley, Protip Biswas, All On Bicycles

The Hebrew Bible mentions “dreams” in Genesis, Deuteronomy, I Samuel, Job, Ecclesiastes, Jeremiah, Daniel, Joel and Zechariah. In the fifth chapter of the Book of Daniel, the prophet interprets Belshazzar’s dream. In the Babylonian King’s dream, a hand with fingers of a man’s hand, writes on the wall. Later the reader of Daniel learns that the “hand” is the hand of God.

Those fingers write, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN (the Arabic singular for PERES). Daniel interprets Belshazzar’s dream as follows:

MENE means “numbered.” God has numbered the days of your reign and has brought it to an end.
TEKEL means “weighed.” You have been weighed in the balances, and you have been found wanting.
PARSIN means “divided.” Your kingdom has been divided and has been given to the Medes and the Persians.
The Prophet Joel (Joel 2:28) prophesies, “Your old men will dream dreams.”

I have never paid much attention to dreams, mine or others. Experts on dreams tell us that we dream almost every time we sleep. Some nights ago I had a dream that I remember. Three worthies of the downtown Atlanta community are featured in my dream: Debi Starnes, the self-named Czar of the homeless; Horace Sibley, the “Don’t give homeless people bicycles” Sibley and Protip Biswas, soon to answer UNDER OATH his part in the CONSPIRATA to disappear The Pine and everyone in it.

In my dream these beauties were all three on their bicycles just outside The Gateway’s multi-million dollar, model shelter. All three pedaling their bicycles as fast as their little bony sticks will let them, but they are not moving, only their spindly legs. Attached to each bicycle is a substantial rope. The rope, tight as Dick’s hat band, leads inside the door and is attached tightly to the leg of a “chronically homeless” woman. Each woman attached to the ropes is inside The Gateway on the floor where she slept the night before.

These three doers of all good have a sleeping woman at the end of each of the three ropes. Homelessness for these three women along with dozens of other women is not ending, not anytime soon, not by any efforts of Starnes or Sibley or Biswax or Gateway or United Way or Strinway or No Way. But all three of thse experts proclaim that they can “place” The Pine’s population of 600 “chronically homeless” within a day or two.

Deep throats that drop nuggets at The Pine tell that Protip Biswax wants those sleeping women and their children UP OFF THAT FLOOR. And he wants that floor clear by the time of his deposition scheduled for Friday, March11, 2011.

I’m not a prophet, only the son of one. I cannot interpret my dream. But the next time I see The Profit Debi “INSIDE/OUTSIDE” Starnes at our favorite watering hole, I will ask her interpretation of my dream. And my humble advice to Debi and Horace and Protip and the rest of TEAM GOLIATH is to peddle babies peddle, I imagine the Court would be interested to know of those homeless women and their children sleeping every night on the floor of The Gateway.

Pedal, Debi, pedal. Judge comin! Belshazzar died at the hands of his conquerors the night following the hand’s writing on the wall. He was last seen pedaling his bicycle somewhere east of the sun and west of the moon. Please remember that Horace Sibley said under oath that a bicycle under the seat of a homeless person ONLY makes drugs more easily available.

James Wilson Beaty
Jeremiah 22.16
March 8, 2011

BUY NIKKY FINNEY, READ NIKKY FINNEY, ABSORB NIKKY FINEY

The March/April, 2011, POETS & WRITERS, features poet Nikky Finney. Her picture is on the cover. Kevin Nance’s must-read article appears on pp. 42-49. Finney’s fourth volume of poetry, HEAD OFF & SHIFT, is available this month from Northwestern University Press. Two of her other volumes are RICE (1995) and THE WORLD IS ROUND (2003).

Following RICE, Beulah Lenorah Butler Davenport, her grandmother squeezing her hand pled, “Let this be your last book.” Grandmother Davenport died in 1999 at age 99. She had lived through the years of the violent Civil Rights Movement. She adored her granddaughter and asked that she let sleeping dogs lie.

Kevin Lance’s article reports that the patriarch of the Finney clan was the first African American Chief Justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court. Nance mentions this Justice in the context of Nikky’s brother’s wedding in Edgefield, South Carolina, attended by U. S. Senator J. Strom Thurmond.

One of the poems in Finney’s HEAD OFF & SPLIT is “Dancing With Strom.” Nance’s article describes the poet’s response as she watches Strom Thurmond dance with woman after woman at the wedding. The patriarch wishes for Nikky to take a whirl with the Senator as well. She shows us her response in the poem mentioned above:

“If I walk down I imagine he will extend his hand, assume I am next in his happy darky line, ‘427’ on his dance card. His history and mine, burnt cork and blackboard chalk, concentric, pancaked, one face, two histories, slow dragging doing the nasty.

Nance quotes Finney, “My responsibility as a poet, as an artist, is to not look away.”
As a daughter of the South, Lynn Carol Finney was born in Conway, South Carolina and lived her childhood in Sumter, South Carolina, where her maternal grandparents farmed.

Nance gives enough of her poetry to make us want more. He writes, ”Probably Finney’s grandmother would have been astonished at what she might have considered the audacity of ‘Plunder,’ in which the poet delivers a scorching indictment of a preening, solipsistic, supremely self-satisfied president giving his final State of the Union address before flying off to his ranch in Texas,

Past the lost city of New
Orleans, the rapidly melting North
Pole, and
And the hundreds of thousands dead in Iraq.

“Grandma Davenport might have shivered too at the implications of ‘The Condoleeza Suite,’ a hair-raising sequence of ‘concertos’ in which arguably the most powerful African American woman in history works out on a treadmill at the Watergate apartments, struggling to focus on a memory of playing Mozart on a Steinway in front of an all-white audience rather than a competing dream about the infamous 1963 bombings in Birmingham, Alabama, of a

church that
explodes into dust,
the heart pine floor giving way beneath
her friend Denise,
rocketing her up in the air like a jack-in-the-box
of a Black girl wrapped in a Dixie cross.

In her prose poem, “The Resurrection of the Errand Girl: An Introduction,” Finney remembers as a girl having been sent to the fish market. She was asked if she wanted the fish gutted. She accepted. Decades later she went on the same errand and is asked the same question again. Her prose poem responds,

No. Not this time. This time she
wants what she was sent for
left whole, just as it was pulled from the sea, everything born
to it still in place. Not a girl any
longer, she is capable of her own
knife-work now. She understands
sharpness & duty. She knows what
a blade can reveal & destoy. She
has come to use life’s points and
edges to uncover life’s treasures.
She would rather be the one
deciding what she keeps and what
she throws away.

Note: What a treasure this poetry, this person. She is capable of her own knife-work now.

James Wilson Beaty
March 8, 2011
Jeremiah 22.16