In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Masked Man, Black: Pandemic & Protest Poems by Frank X. Walker
  • Monique Antonette Lewis (bio)
masked man, black: pandemic & protest poems
Frank X. Walker
Accents Publishing
http://accents-publishing.com/maskedmanblack.html
90 pages; Print, $16.00

Life seems to move faster the older we age, and I find myself wishing more and more that I could teleport to my childhood when the days felt like they would never end. I couldn't wait to grow up, travel the world and live on my own. I was desperate to be an adult. Now, I long for those innocent, lazy hours "watching, listening, / or playing in the rain." Although those days are gone, Frank X Walker's Masked Man, Black beckons the reader to recall what was simple and made us whole, before the ugly side of humanity tainted our hearts and minds.

The collection opens with a soft, gentle voice. The speaker is at peace when left alone with the freedom to reflect on the small wonders on this earth, such as "Baptism by Dirt."

What is it that women knowabout nurturing a seed into a piece of fruit,about believing in the power of dirtand suns and water?

I return from our labor with sore kneesand back, fingernails and hands caked with dirt.She floats back into the house cleaner,somehow less burdened

There are several poems like this one praising a strong, Black mother who doesn't know how to not be giving. Her ability to nurture life is a wonder and awe. She is a woman who "knew poor, broken, and old did not mean indignity." She reappears as a caretaker, a charismatic minister, and a nurse. I see my mother and late grandmother on these pages and in the caring, yet firm voice that says mama knows best. [End Page 32]

We are convinced that "anything good about men / is often a credit to their mothers" such that there is a subtle undertone of shock at the extent racists will go to protect their heritage of slavery and bloodshed, masked under All Lives Matter. Walker poignantly lays out the hypocrisy behind this phrase, which tries to stamp out the harsh double standards lived by Black people daily in the US.

Your daughters of the confederacyPut up all those monumentsto white supremacy to intimidate us,and dared to call it heritage not hate.

Almost every slave ship captain,Confederate officer, Grand Cyclops,Tulsa-rioter, lynch-mobber,redliner, gerrymanderer, biased judge,killer cop, and impeached presidentstarted out as your baby boy.

Walker's collection is more than pandemic and protest poems, rather it is fifty-eight wake-up calls rebuking hypocrisy embodied in white privilege, greed and selfishness, wherein death takes precedence over life as long as the winner gets to tell his story, because "The oppressors' private property/is always more important / to the privileged. Their power / is what police protect."

In Masked Man, Black, the world is forever changed under the mask of a virus killing thousands, but another virus has long existed before COVID—racism.

Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" is reawakened in "The End of Sporting," "Qualified Immunity," "Sleight of Hand," "Offensive Captain," and "Twelve Things Amy Believed She Knew," the latter of which is a culmination of the harrowing "emotional or psychological trauma," experienced in the Black community. The saddest part of the story is all the other Amy's and Black birdwatchers not caught on tape. Who will vindicate their "swinging black body?" We are told that the response in the face of spitting, hate and vitriol, is to "stand in defiance of murder / after murder after murder and still choose life." [End Page 33]

Instead of turning tableswe drag out turntablesand spin and spin and spinsearching old wax, seeking to samplesomething human,anything truly good to mixwith this Black,in our Lives,until we Matter.

The fight against hate means that one must stare an ugly truth in its face. Walker doesn't hold back in "Dirty Dozen" when a Black man is gunned down by police in his own restaurant, as rich "wrong-doers" roam free in in...

pdf