Poetry from Howard Richard Debs

Author Howard Debs
The Gallery Group

I feel like I’m in the “Gallery Group,”
ex-officio; for those who don’t know,
the participants are Democrats who
shared the January 6th experience
secreted in the space for the public 
and the press to observe 
the proceedings of Congress.
Surrounded by marble relief
sculptures, the likes of
Hammurabi, Suleiman, 
Simon de Montfort, Napoleon,
visages in this place
identifying that begun
long before the founding fathers,  
these men and women, white,
black, and brown, enduring a
nightmare in daylight
while the mob marauded. 
For an hour of horror 
before the hallway  
cleared by Capitol Police 
allowing an escape, 
a former Army Ranger, 
a Marine who fought
in Iraq, a prior UNICEF
employee, a previous
CIA operations officer, 
one who had been a labor organizer
whose immigrant father was
a farm worker and immigrant
mother, a nursing home laundress,
U.S. Representatives all, they spent
this time of terror hunkered down, 
pleading in prayer that went viral,
afraid of what would become of
them and America. I feel much 
the same, one year after.
A member of the Gallery 
Group happened to be
carrying a scarf that day,
bearing the Returns of Qualified
Voters and Reconstruction Oath 
of her great-great-great-grandfather
granting him the right to vote after being 
freed from slavery. He could not write 
his name, so he signed with an ‘X.’


Afterword—Lisa Blunt Rochester, U.S. Representative from Delaware in remarks made in Congress to commemorate January 6th recalls her great-great-great-grandfather, a freed slave and those who came before her: “I have continued to hope even when I feel hopeless – my ancestors wouldn’t have it any other way...”


News source: “Trauma in House gallery bonds members of Congress even a year later”



Howard Richard Debs is a recipient of the 2015 Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Awards. His essays, fiction, and poetry appear internationally in numerous publications. His book Gallery: A Collection of Pictures and Words (Scarlet Leaf Publishing), is the recipient of a 2017 Best Book Award and 2018 Book Excellence Award. His book Political (Cyberwit Press) is the 2021 American Writing Awards winner in poetry. He is co-editor of New Voices: Contemporary Writers Confronting the Holocaust, forthcoming from Vallentine Mitchell of London, publisher of the first English language edition of Anne Frank's diary. He is listed in the Poets & Writers Directory.

2 thoughts on “Poetry from Howard Richard Debs

  1. These words very movingly capture a feeling… The poem reminds me of Rosetti calling a sonnet a moment’s monument. I think this poem is a monument to what we collectively went through on that fateful day.

Comments are closed.