The choice of bias as the theme of our current issue was intended to cast a wide net. As a result, you will find a range of poems depicting individuals who suffer from the bias of others as well as poems portraying the struggle some have with their own bias. In a poem by Carol Casey, a speaker cares for a boy with cerebral palsy, without trying to make him conform to some external norm. Rhiannon Hall’s “visiting hours” and “theirs” feature an empathic speaker who comes to question how accepting she actually is of her sister’s desire to maintain gender fluidity. In Heather Cameron’s melodious “Note to the Young Doctor,” a woman recovering from a mastectomy overhears an insensitive remark by the offending male doctor. And those living in poverty or dealing with homelessness, or simply in poor health, are drawn with compassion in Joan Doran’s ironic “The Discharge Planner’s Very Bad Day,” in Joe Amaral’s “Responding to an Emergency,” and in three poems by Ron Riekki, who also dramatizes the plight of refugees. Viewed in aggregate, the poets included here make the case that a state of mind opposed to bias is one that is invested in people as individuals and, above all, empathetic to those in our society most often suffering the emotional, mental, and physical damage of being ignored, demeaned, and  held back by society’s stereotypes and false assumptions.

So many eloquent arguments from the struggle of African Americans for social justice apply to all forms of bias. Reading the wealth of submissions we received, I recalled Martin Luther King Jr. citing in “Letter from Birmingham Jail” the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber’s assertion that racism substitutes an I-it for an I-Thou relationship. I also recalled MLK’s own observation that racism damages not only the souls of those discriminated against but that of the perpetrator or oppressor as well. Once again, we find ourselves at a watershed moment in our country’s history, given the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement kindled by the murder of George Floyd, which, sadly, has been exploited by a president who has also refused on several occasions to denounce white supremacist groups who support him. The greatest threat to the peace and well-being of the body politic is what our response to racism will be going forward.

Because of the urgent moral imperative to renounce racial bias, the opening piece in our poetry section is by Tanasha Martin. In her poem “Voice,” she lends her own voice to the uneven and at times humiliating healthcare given to African Americans and to the long and painful history of their being denied their civil and human rights. In “Do the Math,” she draws a scathing portrait of a doctor impatiently dictating how the speaker should ameliorate the violent death of her brother. Another African American writer’s work anchors the Winter issue’s poetry section. While Anthony Butts’ subject is mental health, his depiction of a harmonious and nurturing hospital environment provides an uplifting image of what we can be at our best: minds free of any type of bias, arms wide open in acceptance of one another as unique individuals, united one and all by our needful humanity. How can we ever be at peace as individuals while injustice deeply divides us as a nation?

Steve Granzyk is the poetry editor of Please See Me.

Image by Bryant L. Jones