POUR, TEAR, CARVE
Free Dollar Remix
By Lesley Younge
—after ROZEAL’s Gold ’n Browns of, uh . . . ’Merica (illustration proposal #2 for The Tanning of America by Steve Stoute), 2020-2021
Grab the mic
Lift it up
America be one big mixtape
most times a broken record,
playing the same damn song
over and over again
Tie the rope
Let it spool
When first gifted, Liberty was brown,
like the land and its people.
They won’t admit that.
Oxidization? Our greed is showing.
Scratch the surface
Hear it play
Cardboard and gold dug out of a heap
Make it do what it do with the scraps
Some got a little and some got a lot
A Lady draped in green speaks the truth.
ROZEAL, Gold ‘n Browns of, uh . . . ’Merica, 2020-21, (illustration proposal #2 for The Tanning of America by Steve Stoute), 2020-2021. Mixed Media on cardboard, 43 x 23 in. Director’s Discretionary Fund purchase and with the generous support of Giorgio Furioso, 2021. Courtesy The Phillips Collection.
Lesley Younge is an educator and writer from Silver Spring, Maryland. She debuted as an author in March with Nearer My Freedom, a middle-school, found-verse novel remix of Olaudah Equiano’s acclaimed autobiography, and A-Train Allen, her first picture book. A fellow of the Hurston/Wright Foundation and Anaphora Literary Arts, Lesley’s work has appeared in Midnight & Indigo and The Plentitudes. She blogs regularly at teacherlesley.com.