Sonnet, and: Judge Gets Grandma to Whip Offender

68 Elizabeth Alexander Sonnet I read my eyes dim. I read in the dark before I could read, flipping flipping pages of my favorite childhood books, A Fly Went By, Little Fur Family, where the beasts were indeterminate, maybe bears,—but so tiny!—or chipmunks, less toothy, or a family of black people, like mine. Adults should not go back and read their childhood books. Could I have grown up thinking we were animals? Think, what do you remember from that book? The child found a beautiful ladybug. The mother and father both sang to their child, little and brown as I was, once —I read my eyes dark and I read for my life. Judge Gets Grandma to Whip Offender Instead of sending a drug offender to prison, a judge took off his belt and had the 18-year old defendant's grandmother whip the young man. The defendant, Jamel Washington, needed "discipline, in the home and in the schools," the judge, Frank Eppes, said on Friday. "I said, 'Grandmama, don't you think he needs a whipping?'" the judge said. "She said he needed one." The whipping was conducted by the grandmother, 63-year old Victoria Washington Ellis. ...