When the bullets started flying, Brandon Jackson thought he was going to die. It was July 7, 2016, and a gunman was firing on a crowd after a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest in downtown Dallas.
Jackson and his friend Brenda Randall, both poets, took refuge in a downtown McDonald’s, surrounded by others who had no idea what was happening. So Jackson and Randall started praying. Soon, the others joined in. When the terror finally subsided, and the two poets returned to life, they wondered what to do with the pain and fear that they and so many others were feeling. Their answer was “Watch, Fight and Pray,” a September 2016 showcase for singers and poets at the South Dallas Cultural Center.
“We wanted to equip people with a way of getting their thoughts out,” Randall says.
Now Randall, Jackson and their fellow poets are once again wondering what to do. After months of quarantine and yet another black person’s death at the hands of the police, Dallas poets are reflecting on their place in the movement for change.
“I have a sincere belief in the power of words,” Jackson says. “Words can heal people. If you’re able to lift someone’s spirit so they go out in the streets and be an activist, that’s the seed. Your word planted the seed for change.”
All of the poets interviewed for this story use their work to process trauma. They are spoken-word performers, and they’ve honed their skills in Dallas’ active spoken-word scene. While not all of these artists know one another, many of them have heard of each other’s work and shared stages at places like DaVerse Lounge. They all miss the thrill of performing, of breathlessly hurling their pain and their prayers at an audience, hoping with every line that at least one person in the crowd understands what they’ve survived.
Jackson, 31, started writing poetry to process the abuse and isolation he experienced at an early age. As a young, gay black man growing up in Bryan, Texas, he felt ostracized because of his skin color and who he loved.
“I was naive, and I was used, mentally and sexually,” he says. ”Poetry was that saving grace, that outlet where I could express everything I was experiencing.” Jackson moved to Dallas in 2010 and three years later, he published his first of four poetry collections. Since then, he has performed around the country, primarily focusing on a message of healing.
“I’m reflecting on the trauma of being American,” he says. “I want to represent what I feel like isn’t often represented: Being a black gay man in this country, who is trying to love and trying to heal.”
In the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing, he wants to divert even more attention to people who, like him, are too often ignored.
“I want to be the representation for other young black men who have to live through things like what we’ve been going through for years,” he says.
Poetry has also helped 19-year-old Jade Curington heal from trauma. When she was 16, Curington’s father was killed.
“I was feeling guilt; I was feeling everything,” she says. “I wrote about the relationship I wish we had and the things I wish we did while he was here. Writing a poem is not going to bring someone back from the dead, but writing that poem was my last words for him that I never got to say.”
When Floyd was killed, Curington was in the midst of a yearlong writer’s block. The Minneapolis man’s death opened the floodgates. She penned “George Floyd,” a searing poem that denounces injustice and addresses everything from affordable housing to the crack epidemic. Curington, who got her start performing at DaVerse Lounge, plans to perform the poem when open mics start happening again.
“If this inspires people or urges people to continue to push for change, then it will have healed me,” she says. “That’s all I ever hope for.”
Ashley Davis, a 34-year-old poet who goes by “C.R.U.S.H.,” is working on a poem about the history of the police. The poem will trace the history of policing back to its roots as a “slave patrol,” and it will “show how it has always been lawful to terrorize people of color.”
The COVID–19 pandemic has been a trying time, C.R.U.S.H. says. “A lot of what I have been working on is protecting my energy, my emotional and mental stability, and my strength,” she says. “There is a lot going on right now, with COVID, the presidency and, of course, overt racism [that] has been constant for centuries. So, to be dealing with it all at once takes a huge toll mentally and emotionally.”
Nevertheless, she plans to use her platform as a poet to craft the kind of emotional work she believes can create change.
“Poets are storytellers,” she says. “”The best we can do is continue to speak and share the truth, so others can see what we’re experiencing.”
Like C.R.U.S.H., poet Alejandra Ramos Gómez must often balance her creativity and her mental health.
Ramos Gómez was born in Juárez, Mexico, and was writing about femicide as young as 13. The Floyd killing gave her a wave of traumatic flashbacks and unearthed the trauma she is still coming to terms with. When she is not writing, the 27-year-old is a dual-language gifted and talented teacher at Walnut Hill Elementary School. In October 2019, a tornado devastated the school. Then the COVID–19 pandemic further disrupted her students’ school year. Now, Ramos Gómez focuses on helping her students realize the power of their creativity. Your words can help you heal, she tells them, and they can help the world heal, too.
“When you share something with poetry, you never know what could happen,” she says. “It may find someone who finds comfort and healing from it. We all have to be change agents in our own way. This is my way.”