portrait of rage with caution tape & bullhorns

Tuesday, June 15, 2021
Erica Garner Will Not Stop Marching — ABC News
  No matter who we lost, the cab drivers are stiff
                        in anti-protest. the corrupt streets, like
  jails, are in season &   exasperated tax dollars do
                                 their thing

 

  our fathers fight to breathe while
                we fight the police air, the police rain, the commissioners
the handcuffed ground they died on,
                              we lie on. We are arrested
  in grief & in rage. We fear
                           we are a national crisis
 
  If our lives mattered, you would vote
                us safe. If our lives mattered, you would die
in the name of my father’s lungs. If our vote mattered,
                we wouldn’t
                             choose presidents, we’d play outside
  & not be afraid. The neighborhoods are
                                          overrun by public interests
  & what do you want? My father prayed eleven times
                & still
                                                      ain’t here
 
  I’d rather be angry, no matter what
                            it doesn’t solve
  I’d rather be forgotten than promise you justice
                                        or the end of my mourning
instead imagine a world where my name is my name
                                                         & a video is enough evidence
 
  Our men are killed or our daddies are jailed
               our mothers ruin our friends into blood
I, too, am killed
            stunned or stoned by a million faulted trials
I, too, cannot breathe cacnannontot breat breathe cannot breathechaenncaontnbcorabcora cannot breathecharenantohtebcraenanthot breathe
                cannot breathe cannot breath    cannotcharenantohtebcraenanthot breathe

 

             He was my father but is no more
  & now everything i have is a bullhorn is a father
                           now the pavement will father me Or my
                father’s
breath will island its way into a mouth, will teach me
                                         how to father myself into
                           death
 
  in honor of my daughter,
             I watch my father cut on national television
and whistle my hands into survival. It’s never really over.

 

I died twice, truly my father’s
 
             daughter and stubborn
on Tuesday s and Thursdays
                            i return the boroughs to a body bag and claim the streets in his name
 
*words pulled from speeches and conversations of erica garner