Memphis Sanitation Strike
(February 11, 1968)
…everything that is responsible for creating something
out of nothing is a kind of poetry; and so all the creations
of every craft and profession are themselves a kind of poetry,
and everyone who practices a craft is a poet.
—Plato, Symposium.
Garbage is a kind of poetry
and trash has a stubborn persistence
to multiply like cash for capitalists.
In 1968 in Memphis
refusing to pick up the garbage
was an act of black resistance.
“I Am A Man!” Not a piece of garbage
to be bit by dogs and
shot with rifle cartridges.
The wages of sin get recycled-
but history’s pages will condemn
the bosses’ hands moist with lotion.
Our hands are rough and calloused.
And the strike is a kind of poetry we write . . .
A poetry in motion.
— Daniel Klawitter
