Short Film

SHORT FILM

i. not an elegy for Trayvon Martin

the rain has come, thus somewhere
a dead thing is being washed away.

This time, they’ve named it a black boy.
This time, every time, same difference.
What a great, sad thought he is, this dead boy
clutching tight to sweetness.

How long does it take a story to become a legend?
How long before a legend becomes a god or
forgotten?

Ask the river what it was like when it was rain
then ask it who it drowned.

ii. not an elegy for Renisha McBride

but an ode to whoever did her hair
& rubbed the last oil into her cold scalp

or a myth the bullet & the red yolk it hungers to show her

or the tale his hands, pale & washed in shadow
for they finished what the car could not.

if I must call this her faith, I call God my enemy.

iii. not an elegy for Mike Brown

I am sick of writing this poem
but bring the boy. his new name

his same old body. ordinary, black
dead thing. bring him & we will mourn
until we forget what we are mourning

& isn’t that what being black is about?
not the joy of it, but the feeling

you get when you are looking
at your child, turn your head,
then, poof, no more child.

that feeling. that’s black.

\\

think: once, a white girl

was kidnapped & that’s the Trojan war.

later, up the block, Troy got shot
& that was Tuesday. are we not worthy

of a city of ash? of 1000 ships
launched because we are missed?

always, something deserves to be burned.
it’s never the right thing.

I demand a war to bring the dead boy back
no matter what his name is this time.

I at least demand a song. a song will do for now.

\\

look at what the lord has made.
above Missouri, sweet smoke.

iv. who has time for joy?

another week, another boy
dead because he’s black

& soon more will wade
into after without a name

or questionable photo
on the local news.

how do you expect
me to dance

when everyday someone
who looks like everyone

I love is in a gun fight
armed only with skin?

look closely
& you’ll find a funeral

frothing in the corners
of my mouth, my mouth

hungry for a prayer
to make it all a lie.

reader, what does it
feel like to be safe?

how does it feel
to dance when you’re not

dancing away the ghost?
how does joy taste

when it’s not followed
by will come in the morning?

reader, it’s morning again
& somewhere, a mother

is pulling her hands
across her boy’s cold shoulders

kissing what’s left
of his face. where

is her joy? what’s she
to do with a son

who’ll spoil soon?
& what of the boy?

what was his last dream?
who sang to him

while the world closed
into dust?

what cure marker did we just kill?
what legend did we deny

his legend? I have no more
room for grief

for it us everywhere now.
listen. listen to my laugh

& if you pay attention
you’ll hear his wake.

\\

prediction: the cop will walk free

the boy will still be dead

\\

every night I pray to my God
for ashes

I pray to my God for ashes
to begin again

my God, for ashes, to begin again
I’d give my tongue

to begin again I’d give my tongue

a cop’s tongue too

v. not an elegy for Brandon Zachery

a boy I was a boy with took his own life
right out his own hands. I forgot

black boys leave that way too
I have no words that bring him

back, I am not magic. I’ve tried, but I am just
flesh, just blood yet to spill. People at the funeral

wondered what made him do it. People said
he saw something. I think that’s it. he saw something

what? the world? a road?

a river saying his name?

trees? a pair of ivory hands?

his reflection? his son’s?

vi. hand me down

all my uncles are veterans of the war
but most of them just call it blackness.

all their music sounds like gospel
from a gun’s mouth. I gather the blues

must be named after the last bit of flame
licking what used to be a pew
or a girl.

I wish our skin didn’t come
with causalities, I can’t imagine a sidewalk

without blood.

//

when the men went off to fight
each other, the women stood

in the kitchen making dinner
for white folks. (no one said

the kitchen was theirs. no one said
their children didn’t thin

then disappear altogether.)

//

so not all the women worked
keeping someone else’s house in order.
my great grandmother owned her block
a shop where she sold fatback & taffy, ran numbers.

I imagine that little stretch of St. Louis
as a kingdom, a church, a safe house
made of ox tails & pork rinds
a place to come to be black & not dead.

//

eventually, all black people die.
I believe when a person dies
the black lives on.