Disposition: Criminal

Aiyana Stanley-Jones Reported as “Disposition: Criminal”

Her barrettes must have looked like razor blades
In the pre-dawn shadows. Or maybe the gaps left
By lost baby teeth could have smuggled narcotics
Into show and tell. Or maybe she muttered
You simple motherfuckers in her sleep,
And that was enough
To qualify somebody’s dead babygirl for thug status.

If our legal system operates at the axis of ethics and logic, from which intersection of America was this bullet fired? Somewhere in the catacombs of precedence it is stated that if a strike incurs casualties beyond the intended target they are to be listed as enemy combatants, on principle. But who aids and abets the trigger-happy? Who blindfolded the executioner? Who beholds a child’s corpse and lists her loss of life as the fine print of her neighbor’s arrest warrant? Probably the same simple motherfucker who put her birth certificate on her daddy’s rap sheet.