Research on Juneteenth,
and I am born
to disquiet by lynchings
from my shelter of privilege,
to find history leveled
under voices once muted,
now megaphoned
from Minneapolis to Berlin.
I am disquieted
by a father’s breaths,
taken under knee
and divisible
by the wrong room
where Breonna was shot.
Disquiet reboots
the me that I was.
I have chosen to be
a speaker in tongues
for free verse
aloud with alarm
when lynchings
are deemed suicides.
No more.
I will resonate
with the pleading
of a father’s breaths,
taken under knee
and divisible
by the wrong room
where Breonna was shot.
No more.
I will resonate
with the thunder
that peals from white pages
when a jogger
is run down
and the sheriff knows.
No more.
I will resonate
from the still of the ground
fertile with silence.
I will bloom
to the struggle
and beauty of shouting,
“Black…