Читать книгу Alphabet Year - Devon Miller-Duggan - Страница 13

August & its burning done. Come snow. Come winter, come

bundling. Yet burning—cities and the shuttered bodies of black humans.

Can black not be the darkness of white hearts? Can

December be instead Waiting-upon-unfearable-births,

elementary un-killing, elementary un-beating, on allchildren children of light?

February & its raised hands. Black lives matter. Raised signs. Black lives

grate against white fear & their own. Black lives

halved, quartered—thrown at, thrown out, thrown against, thrown

in like feed for the caged.

January & its already-failures, its surrendered bodies, its MLK birthday, its wounds

kept new-open, uncleansed, unclosed.

La, la, la they had it coming (all of every year). La, li, la. . .

March with its raised fists or switches—any March.

November with its thanks/no-thanks, with Tamir Rice (12-years old) police-shot dead.

October with its fallings & departures—any October.

Put the gunsfistsswitches down. Raise the bodies not

quite grown, not quite men, not light enough to save.

Revisit all the violent graves of bodies lightly accounted.

September with its raised belt & sit down, shut up—any September.

Torn. This poem between tact & mouths of sharks, this poem

unbound from nothing. This poem white. This poem without body. This poem without

value against a raised hand. This poem raises its hand, fisted around nothing

wooden, leather, metal. This poem speaks

xylology—the study of trees, which stand, which rise like black bodies singing:

Yes, we matter. Yes, we voice. Yes, we are trees, tall even when cut down. This poem

zephyrs its ungentled breath across the bad years, praying.