June Jordan died in 2002, an American child of Jamaican immigrants whose remarkable poetry is collected in “The Essential June Jordan,” a new collection published by Copper Canyon Press. This eloquent fist of a poem reminds us of what remains at stake in this longstanding and necessary conversation that America continues to have with itself.
Democracy Poem
Tell them that I stood
in line
and I waited
and I waited
like everybody
else
But I never got
called
And I keep that scrap
of paper
in my pocket
just in case