Chapin City Blues

Strange fruit, not hanging but withering in crowded trucks—
Loss is expected in transport. Drivers still get paid big bucks.
Brown bodies praying from the pardon of our southern breeze—
The south still produces strange fruit, just not entwined in trees.

Amalia Leticia Ortiz appeared on three seasons of Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry on HBO. She is the author of the 2015 Poetry Discovery Prize winning collection, Rant. Chant. Chisme.Her follow-up collection, The Canción Cabaret & Other Songs, is a hybrid work that combines prose and poetry as a book and a Xicana punk rock musical in performance. You can read “Rememory of Strange Fruit” in the pages of The Canción Cabaret & Other Songs.